History of English literature, tr. by H. van Laun

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600062206M

I

J

HISTOKY

OF

ENGLISH LITEEATUEE

New pAlition
Printe^l by R. & il. Clark, Nov. 15, 1873.

HISTOEY

OF

ENGLISH LITEEATUEE

BY H. A. TAINB, D.C.L.

Translated from the French by H. Van Laun
One of tlie Mut«ra Bt the EdiDbnish Acedemy

EDINBURGH

EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS

1873

CONTENTS.-

BOOK IL— THE RENAISSANCE.

CHAPTEE nL

Ben Jlonson.

The muters of the school, in the school and in their
age — JoQson — His mood — Oharacter — Educa-
tion — Firet efforts — Stnigglcfl — Poverty — Sick-
ness — Death ......

Learning — Classical tastes — Didactic characten^
Qood managemeiLt of his plots — Freedom and
precision of his style — ^Vigour of hie will and

paasion

. Dramas — Oatilitu and Sganui — How he was able
to depict the personages and the passions of the
Roman decadence

Comedies — His refonnation and theory of the theatre
— Satirical comedies — Fotptme — Why these
comedies are serious and warlike — How they
depict the passions of the Kenaissance — His
farces^ITM SiUnt Woman — Why these comedies
are energetic and rude — How they conform with
the tastes of the Renaissance ....

Limits of his talent — Wherein he is inferior to
Molifero— Want of higher philosophy and comic

Ti CONTENTS.

PAGE

gaiety — His imagination and Fancy — The Staple
of News and OynthiaU ReveU — How he treats the
comedy of society, and lyrical comedy — His
smaller poems — His masques — Theatrical and
picturesque manners of the court — Hie Sad
Shepherd — How Jonson remains a poet to his

death 38

VI. General idea of Shakspeare — The fundamental idea
in Shakspeare — Conditions of human reason —
Shakspeare's master faculty — Conditions of exact
representation 45

CHAPTER IV.

I. Life and character of Shakspeare — Family — ^Youth
— Marriage — He becomes an actor — Adonis —
Sonnets — Loves — Humour — Conversation —
Melancholy — The constitution of the productive
and sympathetic character — Prudence^Fortune
— Retirement 50

n. Style — Images — Excesses — Incongruities — Copious-
ness — Difference between the creative and
analytic conception 67

III. Manners — Familiar intercourse — Violent bearing —
Harsh language — Conversation and action —
Agreement of manners and style ... 74

rv. The dramatis persona — ^All of the same family — Brutes
and idiots — Caliban, Ajaz, Cloten, Polonius, the
Nurse — How the mechanical imagination can
precede or survive reason .... 83

V. Men of wit — Difference between the wit of reasoners
and of artists — Mercutio, Beatrice, Rosalind,
Benedict, the clowns — Falstaff ... 90

CONTENTS. vu

PAOV

VL Women — Desdemona, Virginia, Juliet, Miranda,
Imogen, Cordelia, Ophelia, Volumnia — How
Shakspeare represents love — Why he bases virtue
on instinct or passion 96

vn. Villains — lago, Richard III. — How excessive lusts
and the lack of conscience are the natural pro-
vince of the impassioned imagination . . 101

vm. Principal characters — Excess and disease of the
imagination — Lear, Othello, Cleopatra, Corio-
lanus, Macbeth, Hamlet — Comparison of Shak-
speare's psychology with that of the French
tragic authors 104

IX. Fancy — Agreement of imagination with observation
in Shaksx>eare — Interesting nature of sentimental
and romantic comedy — As you like it — Idea of
existence — Midsummer Nighfs Dream^ — Idea of
love — Harmony of all parts of the work —
Harmony between the artist and his work 124

CHAPTER V.
STj^e C^fsttan 39lenat00ance.

I. Vices of the Pagan Renaissance — Decay of the

Southern civilisations 142

n. The Reformation — ^Aptitude of the Germanic races,
and suitability of Northern climates t- Albert
Durer's bodies and souls — His martyrdoms and
last judgments — Luther — His idea of justice —
Construction of Protestantism — Crisis of the
conscience — Renewal of heart — Suppression of
ceremonies — Transformation of the clergy . 148

m. Reformation in England — Tyranny of the ecclesias-
tical courts — Disorders of the clergy — Irritation
of the people — The interior of a diocese — Perse-

viii CONTENTS.

PAGE

cutions and convulsions — The translation of the
Bible — How biblical events and Hebraic senti-
ments are in accordance with contemporary
manners and with the English character — The
Prayer Book — Moral and manly feeling of the
prayers and church service — ^Preaching — ^Latimer
— His education — Character — Familiar and per-
suasive eloquence — ^Death — The martyrs under
Maiy — England thenceforth Protestant . .158
iv. The Anglicans — Close connection between religion
and society — How the religious sentiment pene-
trates literature — How the sentiment of the
beautiful subsists in religion — Hooker — His
breadth of mind and the fulness of his style —
Hales and Chillingworth — Praise of reason and
tolerance — Jeremy Taylor — His learning, im-
agination, and poetic feeling . . . .186

V. The Puritans — Opposition of religion and the world

— ^Dogmas — Morality — Scruples — Their triumph
and enthusiasm — Their work and practical
sense * . 202

VI. Bunyan — His life, spirit, and poetical work — The

Prospect of Protestantism in England .221

CHAPTER VI.
i^flton.

I. Oeneral idea of his mind and character — Family —

Education — Studies — Travels — Return to Eng-
land 240

II. Effects of a concentrated and solitary character —

Austerity — Inexperience — Marriage — Children

— Domestic Troubles 246

CONTEITTS.

Combative energy — Polemic ag^iut the bishops —
Against tbe king — Enthusiasm and stemness —
Theories on gorerumeut, church, and education
—Stoicism and rirtue — Old age, occupations,

IT. Milton's residence in London and the countij —
General q>pearance

T. Milton as a prose-writer — Changes during three
centuries in countenances and ideas — Heaviness
of his logic — The Doctrine and Diteipline nf Divorct
— Heavy Humour — ■ Animadvtrtiim* upon tht
Btmojulranft Definee — Clumsineea of discussiou
— Dtfenrio Popali JnsriiMni— Violence of his
animosities — The reaion of daiTch Gmemtrtent —
EilixmokUuta — Liberality of Doctrines — Of lUfor-
motion — AreopagitiiM — Style — Breadth of elo-
quence—Wealth of imagery — Lyric aubllmily
of diction .......

n. Milton as a poet — How he approaches and is distmct
from the poets of the Renaissance — How he gives
poetry a moral tone — Profane poems — L' Allegro
and II Penitroso — Comut — Lij/eidat — Religious
poems — Paradite Lott — Conditions of a genuine
epic — They are not to be met with in the age
or in the poet — Comparison of Adam and Eve
with on English family — Comparison of Ood and
the angels to a monarch's court — The rest of the
poem — Comparison between the sentiments of
Satan and the republican passions — Lyrical and
moral chaiacter of the sceneiy — Loftiness and
■raise of the moral ideas — Situation of the poet
and the poem between two ages — Composition of
his genius and his work ....

CONTENTS.

BOOK III.— THE CLASSIC AGE.

CHAPTEE I.

([ri)e 3&e0totatunu
I. Ths Roistebebs.

PAGE

I. The excesses of Puritanism — How they induce ex-
cesses of sensuality 320

u. Picture of these manners by a stranger — The M^moires
de Orammoni — ^Difference of debauchery in France
and England 324

ni. Butler*s Hudibras — Platitude of his comic style, and

harshness of his rancorous style . . .328

lY. Baseness, cruelty, brutality, debauchery, of the court

— Rochester, his life, poems, style, morals 332

y. Philosophy consonant with these manners — Hobbes,
his spirit and his style — His curtailments and
his discoveries — His mathematical method —
In how much . he resembles Descartes — His
morality, sesthetics, politics, logic, psychology,
metaphysics — Spirit and aim of his philosophy . 342

VI. The theatre — Alteration in taste, and in the public —

Audiences before and after the Restoration . 350

VII. Dryden — ^Disparity of his comedies — Unskilfiilness of

his indecencies — How he translates Moli^re's
Amphitryon . . . . . . .353

vni. Wycherley — Life — Character — Melancholy, greed,
immodesty — Love in a Wood, Country IVife^
Dancing Master — Licentious pictures, and re-
pugnant details — His energy and realism — Parts
of Olivia and Manly in his Plain Dealer —
Certain words of Milton's Paradise Lost . .357

2. ThB WoBLDLIirOB.

I. Appearance of the worldly life in Europe — Its
conditionB and causee — Ho v it vas eatablished in
England — Etiquette, amuaementB, conrenationB,
manners, and talents of tlie drawing-Toom

n. Dawn of the classic spirit in Europe — Ita origin —
Its nature — Difference of conrenation under
Elizabeth and Charles II

nL Sir Willitun Temple — His life, character, spirit, and
Btjle

IT. Writera of fashion — Their correct language and
gallant bearing — Sir Charles Sedley, the Earl
of Dorset, Edmund Waller — His opinions and
s^le — Wherein consists his polish — Wherwn
he ifl not sufficiently polished — Culture of style
— Lack of poetry — Character of mouarcliical and
daasic style

V. Sir John Denham — His poem of Cooptr's Hill —
Oratorical swell of his verae — English seriousness
of his moral preoccupationa — How people of
bsMon and literary men followed then the
fiishions of France

TT. The comic-authors — Comparison of this theatre with
that of Molifere — Arrangement of ideas in Moli&re
— General ideaa in Molibre — How in Molifere
the odious is concealed, while the truth is de-
[Hcted — How in Moli&re the honest man is still
the man of the world — How the respectable man
of Holifere is a French type ....
TIL Action — Complication of intrigues — Frivolity of
purpose — CradenesB of the characters — Grossnees
{^manners — Wherein consists the talent of
Wycherlqr, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farqnhar —
Efaid of characters they are able to produce

zii CONTENTS.

PiLOE

yni. Natural characters — Sir John Brute, the hosband ;
Squire Sullen — Sir Tunbellyy the father — Miss
Hoyden, the young lady — Squire Humphry , the
young gentleman — Idea of nature aooording to
thiB theatre 414

DL Artificial characters — ^Women of the world — Miss
Prue, Lady Wishfort, Lady Pliant, Mrs, MUlamcmt
— Men of the world — Mirabell — Idea of society
according to this theatre — Why this culture
and this literature have not produced durable
works — ^Wherein they are opposed to the English
character — Transformation of taste and mumers 419

X. The continuation of comedy — Sheridan — Life —
Talent — The School for Scandal — How comedy
degenerates and is extinguished — Causes of the
decay of the theatre in Europe and in England . 432

mSTOKY OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE.

BOOK 11.
THE RENAISSANCE.

CHAPTEE III.
)3ni Sammx.

"When s new ci^-ilisation brings a new art to light,
there are about a dozen men of talent who partly express
the general idea, surrounding one or two men of genius
who express it thoroughly. Guillen de Castro, Perez
de Montalvan, Tirzo de Molina, Euiz de Alarcon,
Agustin Moreto, surrounding Calderon and Lope de
Vega; Grayer, Van Oost, Kombouts, Van Thulden,
Van Dyck, Honthorst, surrounding Eubens ; Ford, Mar-
lowe, Masainger, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher, sur-
rounding Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. The first
constitute Uie chorus, the others are the leading men.
They sing the same piece together, and at times the
chorist is equal to the solo artist ; but only at times.
Thus, in the dramas which I have just referred to, the
poet occasionally reaches the summit of his art, hits
upon a complete character, a burst of sublime passion ;
VOL. a B

2 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

then he falls back, gropes amid qualified successes,
rough sketches, feeble imitations, and at last takes
refuge in the tricks of his trade. It is not in him, but
in great men like Ben Jonson and Shakspeare, that we
must look for the attainment of his idea and the fulness
of his art. " Numerous were the wit-combats," says
FuDer, "betwixt him (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson,
which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and
an English man-of-war. Master Jonson (like the
former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow
in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English
man-of-war, lesser in bidk, but lighter in sailing, could
turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of
all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."*
Such was Ben Jonson physically and morally, and his
portraits do but confirm this just and animated outline :
a vigorous, heavy, and uncouth person ; a broad and
long face, early disfigured by scurvy, a square jaw, large
cheeks ; his animal organs as much developed as those
of his intellect : the sour aspect of a man in a passion
or on the verge of a passion ; to which add the body
of an athlete, about forty years of age, " mountain belly,
ungracious gait." Such was the outside, and the inside
is like it. He was a genuine Englisliman, big and
coarsely framed, energetic, combative, proud, often
morose, and prone to strange splenetic imaginations.
He told Drummond that for a whole night he imagined
'* that he saw the Carthaginians and Eomans fighting
on his great toe." ^ Not that he is melancholic by
nature ; on the contrary, he loves to escape from him-

* Fuller's WoHhiM, ed. Nuttall, 1840, 3 vols, ill 284.
' There is a similar hallucination to be met with in the life of Lord
Castlereagh, who afterwards committed suicide.

OSAP. m. BEN JOKSON. 3

self by &efi and noisy, unbridled merriment, by copious
and varied converse, assisted by good Canary wine,
vhicb be imbibes, and v'hicb ends by becoming a
necessity to Mm. These great phlegmatic butchers'
&ames require a generous liquor to give them a tone,
and to supply the place of the sun whicb they lack.
Expansive moreover, hospitable, even lavish, with a
&ank imprudent spirit,^ making him forget himself
wholly before Drummond, his Scotch host, an over rigid
and malicious pedant, who has marred his ideas and
vilified his character.' What we know of his life is in
harmony with his person: be suffered much, fought
much, dared much. He was studying at Cambridge,
when his stepfather, a bricklayer, recalled him, and
taught him to use the tioweL He ran away, enlisted
aa a common soldier, and served in the English army,
at that time engaged against the Spaniards in the Low
Countries, killed and despoiled a man in single combat,
" in the view of both armies." He was a man of bodily
action, and he exercised his limbs in early life,' On
his return to England, at the age of nineteen, he went
on the stage for his livelihood, and occupied himself
also in touching up dramas. Having been challei^ed,
he fooght a duel, was seriously wounded, but killed

' Hu Dhaiscter lies between those of Fielding and Dr. Johoson.

* Mr. David L*ing remarks, howeTer, in Dnmunond'a defence, that
M "Johbou died Aognst 6, 1637, Drununond aurvived tiJl December
4, 1619, and no portion of these Notes (ConvenationB) were made
public till 1711, OTaiity-two years after Drnntmond'a death, andseTeut;-
foDT after Jansoa's, which renders quite nngatoiy all Gifford'a accnaa-
tioiu of Drtunmoud's having published them 'without ahame.' At
to Dnunmond decojing Joubod under hli roof with any premeditated
deaign on hia reputation, ai Hr. Campbell haa remarked, no one can
MiioliBly believe it."—Archaologi£a SaAiea, voL iv. page 213. — Tn.

' At the age of forty-four he went to Scotland on foot.

4 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

his adveisaiy; for tMs he was cast into pnson, and
found himself "nigh the gallows." A catholic priest
visited and converted him ; quitting his prison penniless,
at twenty years of age, he married. At last, four years
later, his first successful play was acted. Children
came, he must earn bread for them ; and he was not
inclined to follow the beaten track to the end, being
persuaded that a fine philosophy — a special nobleness
and dignity — ought to be introduced into comedy, —
that it was necessary to follow the example of the
ancients, to imitate their severity and their accuracy,
to be above the theatrical racket and the common
improbabilities in which the vulgar delighted. He
openly proclaimed his intention in his prefaces, sharply
railed at his rivals, proudly set forth on the stage ^ his
doctrines, his morality, his character. He thus made
bitter enemies, who defamed him outrageously and
before their audiences, whom he exasperated by the
violence of his satires, and against whom he struggled
without intermission to the end. He did more, he
constituted himself a judge of the public corruption,
sharply attacked the reigning vices, " fearing no strum-
pet's drugs, nor ruflBan's stab." ^ He treated his hearers
like schoolboys, and spoke to them always like a censor
and a master. If necessary, he ventured further. His
companions, Marston and Chapman, had been committed
to prison for some reflections on the Scotch in one of
their pieces called "Eastward-Hoe;" and the report
spreading that they were in danger of losing their noses
and ears, Jonson, who had written part of the piece,
voluntarily surrendered himself a prisoner, and obtained

^ Parts of OrUes and Asper.

' Every Man out of his Bumour, i ; Gifford's Jonson, p. 30.

CSAP. m. BEN JONSON. 5

their pardon. On his return, amid the feasting and
rejoicing, his mother showed him a violent poison which
she intended to put into his drink, to save him &om
the execution of the sentence ; and " to show that she
was not a coward," adds Jonson, " she had resolved to
drink first" We see that in vigorous actions he found
examples in his own family. Toward the end of his
life, money was scarce with him ; he was liberal,
improvident; his pockets always had holes in them,
and his hand was always ready to give ; though he had
written a vast quantity, he was still obliged to write
in order to Hva Faralysis came on, his scurvy became
wors^ dropsy set in. He could not leave his room,
nor walk without assistance. His last plays did not
succeed. In the epilogue to the New Inn he says :

" If yon expect more than yon had tonight,
The maker b sick and sad. . . .
All that bis &iiit and ftlt'iing tongue doth crave,
le, that you not impute it to hia brain.
That's yet unhurt, altho' set round with pain,
It cannot long hold out."

His enemies brutally insulted him :

" Thy P^aauB . . .
He had bequeathed his belly unto thee,
To hold that little learning which is fled
Into thy guts from out thy emptye head."

Inigo Jones, his colleague, deprived him of the patron-
age of the court. He was obliged to beg a supply of
money &om the Lord Treasurer, then from the Earl
of Newcastle :

6 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

" Disease, the enemy, and his engineers,
Want, with the rest of his concealed compeers,
Have cast a trench about me, now five years. ...
The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days ;
But lies blocked up and straitened, narrowed in,
Fixed to the bed and boards, unlike to win
Health, or scarce breath, as she had never been." ^

His wife and children were dead ; he lived alone, for-
saken, waited on by an old woman. Thus almost always
sadly and miserably, is dragged out and ends the last
act of the human comedy. After so many years, after
so many sustained efforts, amid so much glory and
genius, we find a poor shattered body, drivelling and
suffering, between a servant and a priest

IL

This is the life of a combatant, bravely endured,
worthy of the seventeenth century by its crosses and
its energy; courage and force abounded throughout.
Few writers have laboured more, and more conscienti-
ously; his knowledge was vast, and in this age of eminent
scholars he was one of the best classics of his time, as
deep as he was accurate and thorough, having studied
the most minute details and understood the true spirit
of ancient Ufa It was not enough for him to have
stored his mind from the best writers, to have their
whole works continually in his mind, to scatter his
pages whether he would or no, with recollections of
them. He dug into the orators, critics, scholiasts, gram-
marians, and compilers of inferior rank ; he picked up

^ Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. Bell, An Epistle Mendicant^ to Richard,
Lord Weston, Lord High Treasurer (1681), p. 244.

CEAP. m. BEN JONSON. 7

stray frt^ments ; he took cbamcteis, jokes, refinementa,
from Atheueeus, Libanlus, Fhilostratus. He had so
well entered into and digested the Greek and Latin
ideas, that they were incorporated with his own. They
enter into his speech wiUiout incongruity ; they spring
forth in him as vigorous as at their grst hirth ; he
originates even when he remembeis. On every subject
he had this thiiat for knowledge, and this gift of master-
ing knowledge. He knew alchemy when he wrote the
Alchemist. He is familiar with alembics, retorts,
receivers, as if he had passed his life seeking after the
phOosopher's stone. He explains incineration, calcina-
tion, imbibition, rectification, reverberation, as well as
Agrippa and Paracelsus. If he speaks of cosmetics,'
he brings out a sbopful of them ; we might make out
of hifl plays a dictionary of the oaths and costumes of
courtiers ; he seems to have a specialty in all branches.
A still greater proof of his force is, that his learning in
nowise mars his vigour ; heavy as is the mass with
which he loads himself, he carries it without stooping.
This wonderful mass of reading and observation sud-
denly b^ins to move, and falls like a mountain on the
overwhelmed reader. We must hear Sir Epicure
Manunon unfold the vision of splendours and debauchery,
in which he means to plunge, when he has learned to
make gold. The refined and unchecked impurities of
the Eoman decadence, the splendid obscenities of
Heliogabalus, the gigantic fancies of luxury and lewd-
ness, tables of gold spread with foreign dainties, draughts
of dissolved pearls, nature devastated to provide a single
dish, the many crimes committed by sensuality against
nature, reason, and justice, the delight in defying and
> Tht Demi ia UTt Au.

8 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

outraging law, — all these images pass before the eyes
with tlie dash of a torrent and the force of a great river.
Phrase follows phrase without intermission, ideas and
facts crowd into the dialogue to paint a situation, to
give clearness to a character, produced from this deep
memory, directed by this solid logic, launched by this
powerful reflection. It is a pleasure to see him ad-
vance weighted with so many observations and recol-
lections, loaded with technical details and learned
reminiscences, without deviation or pause, a genuine
literary Leviathan, like the war elephants which used
to bear towers, men, weapons, machines, on their backs,
and ran as swiftly with their freight as a nimble steed.
In the great dash of this heavy attempt, he finds a
path which suits him. He has his style. Classical
erudition and education made him a classic, and he
writes like his Greek models and his Eoman masters.
The more we study the Latin races and literatures in
contrast with the Teutonic, the more fuDy we become
convinced that the proper and distinctive gift of the
first is the art of development, that is, of drawing up
ideas in continuous rows, according to the rules of rhe-
toric and eloquence, by studied transitions, with regular
progress, witliout shock or bounds. Jonson received
&om his acquaintance witli the ancients the habit of
decomposing ideas, unfolding them bit by bit in natural
order, making himself understood and believed. From
the first thought to the final conclusion, he conducts
the reader by a continuous and uniform ascent The
track never faUs with him as witli Shakspeare. He does
not advance like the rest by abrupt intuitions, but by
consecutive deductions ; we can walk with him without
need of bounding, and we are continually kept upon the

CHAP. m. BEN JOKSON. 9

straight path : antitheBis of words unfolds antithesis of
thoi^hts ; symmettical phrases guide the mind throngh
difficult ideas ; they are like barriers set on either side
of the road to prevent our falling into the ditch. We
do not meet on our way extraordinary, sudden, gorgeous
images, which might dazzle or delay us ; we travel on, en-
lightened by moderate and sustained metaphors. Jonson
has all the methods of Latin art ; even, when he wishes
it, especially on Latin subjects, he has the last and
most erudite, the brilliant conciseness of Seneca and
Lucan, the squared equipoised, filed off antithesis, the
most happy and studied artifices of oratorical archi-
tecture.^ Other poets are nearly visionaries ; Jonson is
almost a logician.

Hence his tAlent, his successes, and his faults : if he
has a better style and better plots than the others, he
is not, like them, a creator of souls. He is too much
of a theorist, too preoccupied by rules. His argumenta-
tive habits spoil him when he seeks to shape and motion
complete and hving men. No one is capable of
fashioning these unless he possesses, like Shakspeare,
the im^ination of a seer. The human being is so
complex that the It^cian who perceives his different
elements in succession can hardly study them all, much
less gather them all in one flash, so as to produce the
dramatic response or action in which they are concen-
trated and which should manifest them. To discover
such actions and responses, we need a kind of inspiration
and fever. Then the mind works as in a dream. The
characters move within the poet, almost involuntarily :
he waits for them to speak, he remains motionless,
hearing their voices, wholly wrapt in contemplation, in
' S^anua, OaUiina, prutbn.

10 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

order that he may not disturb the inner drama which
they are about to act in his souL That is his artifice :
to let them alona He is quite astonished at their dis-
course ; as he observes them, he forgets that it is he
who invents them. Their mood, character, education,
disposition of mind, situation, attitude, and actions,
form within him so well-connected a whole, and so
readily unite into palpable and soUd beings, that he
dares not attribute to his reflection or reasoning a
creation so vast and speedy. Beings are organised in
him as in nature, that is, of themselves, and by a force
which the combinations of his art could not replace.^
Jonson has nothing wherewith to replace it but these
combinations of art. He chooses a general idea — cun-
ning, folly, severity — and makes a person out of it
This person is called Crites, Asper, Sordido, Deliro,
Pecunia, Subtil, and the transparent name indicates the
logical process which produced it. The poet took an
abstract quality, and putting together all the actions to
which it may give rise, trots it out on the stage in a man's
dress. His characters, like those of la Bruyfere and
Theophrastus, were hammered out of solid deductions.
Now it is a vice selected from the catalogue of moral
philosophy, sensuality thirsting for gold : this perverse
double inclination becomes a personage. Sir Epicure
Mammon ; before the alchemist, before the famulus,
before his friend, before his mistress, in public or alone,
all his words denote a greed of pleasure and of gold,
and they express nothing more.^ Now it is a mania

^ Alfred de Musset, preface to La Coupe et les Ltvrea, Plato : Ion,
' Compare Sir Epicure Mammon with Baron Hulot from Balzac's

Cousine BetU, Balzac, who is learned like Jonson, creates real beings

like Shakspeare.

CHAP. HL BEN JONSON. 11

gathered from the old sophists, a babbling -with horror
of noifla ; this form of mental pathology becomes a pei^
sonage, Morose ; the poet has the air of a doctor -who
has undertaken to record exactly all l^e desires of
speech, all the necessities of silence, and to record no-
thing else. Now he picks out a ridicule, an afiecta-
tion, a species of folly, from the manners of the dandies
and the courtiers ; a mode of swearing, an extravagant
style, a habit of gesticulating, or any other oddity con-
tracted by vanity or fashion. The hero whom he covers
with these eccentricities, is overloaded by them. He
disappears beneath Ms enormous trappings; he drags
them about with him everywhere ; he cannot get rid
of them for an iastant. We no longer see the man
under tiie dress ; he is like a mannikin, oppressed
under a cloak, too heavy for him. Sometimes, doubtless,
his habits of geometrical construction produce personages
almost life-like. BobadU, the grave boaster; Captain
Tucca, Uie beting bully, inventive buffoon, ridiculous
talker; Amorphus the traveller, a pedantic doctor of
good manners, laden with eccentric phrases, create as
much illusion as we can wish ; but it is because they
are flitting comicalities and low characters. It is not
necessary for a poet to study such creatures ; it is
enough that he discovers in them three or four leading
features ; it is of little consequence if they always pre-
sent themselves with the same attitudes ; they produce
lai^ter, like the Countess (TEscarbaffnas or any of the
Fdehaix in Moli^re; we want nothing else of them.
On the contrary, the others weary and repel us. They
are stage-masks, not living figures. Having acquired
a fixed expression, they persist to the end of the piece
in tlieir onvaiying grimace or their eternal frown. A

12 THE RENAISSANCR book n.

man is not an abstract passion. He stamps the vices
and virtues which he possesses with his individual mark.
These vices and virtues receive, on entering into him,
a bent and form which they have not in others. No
one is unmixed sensuality. Take a thousand sensu-
alists, and you will find a thousand different modes of
sensuality ; for there are a thousand paths, a thousand
circumstances and degrees, in sensuality. If Jonson
wanted to make Sir Epicure Manmion a real being, he
should have given him the kind of disposition, the
species of education, the manner of imagination, which
produce sensuality. When we wish to construct a
man, we must dig down to the foundations of man-
kind ; that is, we must define to ourselves the structure
of his bodily machine, and the primitive gait of his
mind. Jonson has not dug sufficiently deep, and his
constructions are incomplete; he has built on the
surface, and he has built but a single story. He was
not acquainted with the whole man, and he ignored
man's basis ; he put on the stage and gave a representa-
tion of moral treatises, fragments of history, scraps of
satire ; he did not stamp new beings on the imagina-
tion of mankind.

He possesses all other gifts, and in particular the
classical ; first of all, the talent for composition. For
the first time we see a connected, well-contrived plot,
a complete intrigue, with its beginning, middle, and
end ; subordinate actions well arranged, well combined ;
an interest which grows and never flags; a leading
truth which all the events tend to demonstrate; a
ruling idea which all the characters unite to illustrate ;
in short, an art like that which Molifere and Ecwine were
about to apply and teach. He does not, like Shak-

CHAP. in. BEN JONSOK. 13

speaie, take a Bovel from Greene, a chronicle from
Holinshed, a life from Plutarch, such as they are, to
cut them into Bcenes, irrespective of likelihood, indiffer-
ent as to order and unity, caring only to set up men,
at times wandering into poetic reveries, at need fitdshing
np the piece abruptly with a recognition or a butchery.
He governs himself and bis characters ; he wills and he
knows all that they do, and all that he does. But
beyond his habits of Latin regularity, he possesses the
great faculty of his ^e and race, — the sentiment of
nature and existence, the exact knowledge of precise
detail, the power in frankly and boldly handling frank
passions. This gift is not wanting in any writer of the
time; they do not fear words that are true, shock-
ing, and striking details of the bedchamber or medical
study ; the prudery of modem England and the refine-
ment of monarchical France veil not the nudity of
their figures, or dim the colouring of their picturea
They live freely, amply, amidst living things ; they see
the ins and outs of lust raging without any feeling of
shame, hypocrisy, or palliation ; and they exhibit it as
they see it, Jonson as boldly as the rest, occasionally
more boldly than the rest, strengthened as be is by the
vigour and niggedness of his athletic temperament, by
the extraordinary exactness and abundance of his
observations and his knowledge. Add also his moral
loftiness, his asperity, his powerful chiding wrath, ex-
asperated and bitter against vice, bis will strengthened
by pride and by conscience :

" With an anned tind resolved hand,
111 atrip the ragged follies of the time
Naked as at their birth . . . and with a whip of ateel,
Print wounding lashes in their iroa ribs.

U THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

I fear no mood stampt in a private brow,
When I am pleas'd t' unmask a public vice.
I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab,
Should I detect their hateful luxuries ; " ^

above all, a scorn of base compliance, an open disdain

^^^ " Those jaded wits

That run a broken pace for common hire," — ^

an enthusiasm, or deep love of

" A happy muse,
Borne on the wings of her immortal thought.
That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel.
And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs." ^

Such are the energies which he brought to the drama
and to comedy ; they were great enough to ensure him
a high and separate position.

III.

For whatever Jonson undertakes, whatever be his
faults, haughtiness, rough-handling, predilection for
morality and the past, antiquarian and censorious
instincts, he is never little or dull. It signifies nothing
that in his Latinised tragedies, Sejanus, Catiline, he is
fettered by the worship of the old 'wom models of the
Eoman decadence ; nothing that he plays the scholar,
manufactures Ciceronian harangues, hauls in choruses
imitated from Seneca, holds forth in the style of Lucan
and the rhetors of the empire; he more than once
attains a genuine accent ; through his pedantry, heavi-
ness, literary adoration of the ancients, nature forces its

* Every Man out of his Humour, Prologue.
' FoetasUr, i. 1. • Ibid,

CHAP. in. BEN JONSON. 15

way; he lights, at his first attempt, on the crudities,
horrors, gigantic lewdness, shameless depravity of im-
perial Borne ; he takes in hand and sets in motion the
lusts and ferocities, the passions of courtesans and
princesses, the daring of assassins and of great men,
which produced Messalina,Agrippina, Catiline, Tiberius.^
In the Eome which he places before us we go boldly
and straight to the end ; justice and pity oppose no
barriers. Amid these customs of victors and slaves,
human nature is upset ; corruption and villany are held
as proofs of insight and energy. Observe how, in
Sejanus, assassination is plotted and carried out with
marvellous coolness. livia discusses with Sejanus the
methods of poisoning her husband, in a clear style,
without circumlocution, as if the subject were how to
gain a lawsuit or to serve up a dinner. There are no
equivocations, no hesitation, no remorse in the Eome
of Tiberius. Glory and virtue consist in power;
scruples are for base minds ; the mark of a lofty heart
is to desire aU and to dare alL Macro says rightly :

" Men's fortune there is virtue ; reason their will ;
Their license, law ; and their observance, skiU.
Occasion is their foil ; conscience, their stain ;
Profit, their lustre ; and what else is, vain.'' ^

Sejanus addresses Livia thus :

" Royal lady, . .".
Yet, now I see your wisdom, judgment, strength,
Quickness, and will, to apprehend the means
To your own good and greatness, I protest
Myself through rarified, and tum'd all flame
In your affection." ^

^ See the second Act of Catiline.
' The FaU of Sejanus, iii last Scene. ' Ibid, il

16 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

These are the loves of the wolf and his mate ; he
praises her for being so ready to kill. And observe in
one moment tlie morals of a prostitute appear behind
the manners of the poisoner. Sejanus goes out, and
immediately, like a courtesan, Livia turns to her physi-
cian, saying :

" How do I look to-day 1

Eudemut. Excellent clear, believe it. This same fucus
Was well laid on.

Livia, Methinks 'tis here not white.

E, Lend me your scarlet, lady. Tis the sun
Hath giv'n some little taint tmto the ceruse,
You should have us'd of the white oil I gave you.
Sejanus, for your love ! His very name
Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts. . . .

[Paintt htr chctkt^
" Tis now well, lady, you should
Use of the dentifrice I prescribed you too.
To clear your teeth, and the prepared pomatum.
To smooth the skin. A lady cannot be
Too curious of her form, that still would hold
The heart of such a person, made her captive,
As you have his : who, to endear him more
In your clear eye, hath put away his wife . . .
Fair Apicata, and made spacious room
To your new pleasures.

L. Have not we rctum'd

That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery
Of all his counsels ? . . .

E, When will you take some physic, lady ?
L. \Vhen

I shall, Eudemus : but let Drusus* dnig
Be first prepared.

E, Were Lygdus made, that's done

I'U send you a perfume, first to resolve

CHAP. m. BEN JONSON. 17

And procure sweat, and then prepare a bath
To cleanse and dear the cutis ; against when
m have an excellent new fiicus made
BeeistiTe 'gainst the sun, the rain or wind,
WLich you shall lay on with a breath or oil.
As you beet like, and last some foorte^ hours.
Thia change came timely, lady, for your health." '

He ends by congratulating her on her approaching
change of husbands; Druaus was injuring her com-
plexion ; Sejanus is far preferable ; a physiological and
practical conclusion. The Roman apothecary kept on
the same shelf his medicine-chest, hia chest of cosmetics,
and his box of poisons.'

After this -we find one after another all the scenes of
Koman life unfolded, the bargain of murder, the comedy
of justice, the shamelessness of flattery, the anguish and
Tacillation of the senate. When Sejanus wishes to buy
a conscience, he questions, jokes, plays round the offer
he is about to make, throws it out as if in pleasantry,
so as to be able to withdraw it, if need be ; then, when
the intelligent look of the rascal, whom he is trafficking
with, shows that he is understood :

" Protest not,
Thy looks are vows to me. . . .
Thou art a man, made to make consuls. Go." '

Elsewhere, the senator Latiaris in his own house storms
before his Mend Sabinus, against tyranny, openly ex-
presses a desire for liberty, provoking him to speak.

^ The Fall o/Sganut, il

* See Oift/tne, Act u. ; aTeryfinflKeneiDolMS plainspobeDanduii-
nuted, on tiie diiapBtioii of the higher ranks in Rome.
' The Fall of Scania, i.
VOL. n. C

18 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Then two spies who were hid " between the roof and
ceiling," cast themselves on Sabinus, crying, " Treason
to Caesar ! " and drag him, with his face covered, before
the tribimal, thence to "be tlirown upon the Gemonies."^
So, when the senate is assembled, Tiberius has chosen
beforehand the accusers of Silius, and their parts dis-
tributed to them. They mumble in a comer, whilst
aloud is heard, in the emperor's presence :

" CsBsar,
Live long and happy, great and royal Caesar ;
The gods preserve thee and thy modesty,
Thy wisdom and thy innocence. . . .

Guard
His meekness, Jove, his piety, his care,
His bounty" 2

Then the herald cites the accused ; Varro, the consul,
pronounces the indictment ; Afer hurls upon them his
bloodthirsty eloquence : the senators get excited ; we
see laid bare, as in Tacitus and Juvenal, the depths of
Roman servility, hypocrisy, insensibility, the venomous
craft of Tiberius. At last, after so many others, the
turn of Sejanus comes. The fathers anxiously assemble
in the temple of Apollo ; for some days j^ast Tiberius
has seemed to be trying to contradict himself; one day
he appoints the friends of his favourite to high places,
and the next day sets his enemies in eminent positions.
The senators mark the face of Sejanus, and know not
what to anticipate; Sejanus is troubled, then after a
moment's cringing is more arrogant than ever. The
plots are confused, the rumours contradictory* Macro
alone is in the confidence of Tiberius, and soldiers are

» The Fall of Sejanus, iv. * Ibid, iil

CHAP, m, BEN JONSON. 19

seen, drawn up at the porch of the temple, ready to
enter at the slightest commotion. The formula of con-
vocation is read, and the council marks the names of
those who do not respond to the sunmions; then
Begulus addresses them, and announces that Gsesar

" Propounds to this grave senate, the bestowing
Upon the man he loves, honoured Sejanus,
The tribunitial dignity and power :
Here are his letters, signed with his signet.
What pleaseth now the Fathers to be done 1 "

'^ Senators, Read, read them, open, pubUcly read them.

Cotta, Caesar hath honoured his own greatness much
In thinking of this act.

Trio. It was a thought

Happy, and worthy Caesar.

Latiaris, And the lord

As worthy it, on whom it is directed !

Hateritis, Most worthy !

Sanquinius, Rome did never boast the virtue
That could give envy bounds, but his : Sejanus —

Ist Sen, Honour'd and noble !

2d Sen, Grood and great Sejanus !

Prcecones, Silence ! " ^

Tiberius' letter is read. First, long obscure and
vague phrases, mingled with indirect protestations and
accusations, foreboding something and revealing nothing.
Suddenly comes an insinuation against Sejanus. The
fathers are alarmed, but the next line reassures them.
A word or two further on, the same insinuation is
repeated with greater exactness. " Some there be that
would interpret this his public severity to be particular
ambition ; and that, imder a pretext of service to

* The Fall of Sejanue, v.

20 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

MB, he doth but remove his own lets: allying the
strengths he hath made to himself, by the praetorian
soldiers, by his faction in court and senate, by the
offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his
popularity and dependents, his urging (and almost
driving) us to this our unwilling retirement, and lastly^
his aspiring to be our son-in-law." The fathers rise :
" This is strange ! " Their eager eyes are &(ed on the
letter, on Sejanus, who perspires and grows pale ; their
thoughts are busy with conjectures, and the words of
the letter fall one by one, amidst a sepulchral silence,
caught up as they fall with all devouring and attentive
eagerness. The senators anxiously weigh the value of
these shifty expressions, fearing to compromise them-
selves with the favourite or witii the prince, all feeling
that they must understand, if they value their lives.

" ' Your wudomty cofueript fathert, are able to examine^ and
uneure thete iuggeetiont. But, were they left to our abiolving voiee^
toe durtt pronounce them, as we think them^ moit malidoui,*

Senator. 0, he has restored all ; list.

Prasco, ' Yet are they offered to he averr'd, and on the lives of
ths informers,* " ^

At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those
next Sejanus forsake him. "Sit farther. . . . Let's
remove ! " The heavy Sanquinius leaps panting over
the benches. The soldiers come in ; then Macro.
And now, at last, the letter orders the arrest of Sejanus.

" Begulus, Take him hence ;
And all the gods guard Caesar !
Trio, Take him hence.
Haterius. Hence.

^ The Fall ofS^amus, t.

CHAP. m. BEN JONSOK 21

Chtta, To the dungeon with him.

Sanguinius. He deserves it.

Senator. Grown all our doors with bays.

San, And let an ox,

With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led

Unto the CapitoL
Bat, And sacrific'd

To Jove, for CsBsar's safety.
Tri. All our gods

Be present still to Caesar ! . . .
Cot, Let all the traitor's titles be defac'd.
Tri, His images and statues be pull'd down. . . .
Sen, Liberty, liberty, liberty ! Lead on,

And praise to Macro that hath saved Rome ! " ^

It is the baying of a furious pack of hounds, let
loose at last on him, under whose hand they had
crouched, and who had for a long time beaten and
bruised them. Jonson discovered in his own energetic
soul the energy of these Boman passions; and the
clearness of his mind, added to his profound knowledge,
powerless to construct characters, furnished him with
general ideas and striking iacidents, which suffice to
depict manners.

IV.

Moreover, it was to this that he turned his talent
Nearly all his work consists of comedies, not sentimen-
tal and fanciful as Shakspeare's, but imitative and
satirical, written to represent and correct follies and
vices. He introduced a new model ; he had a doctrine ;
his masters were Terence and Plautus. He observes
the imity of time and place, almost exactly. He ridi-
cules the authors who, in the same play,

^ The Fall ofSeja^u^ v.

22 THE RENAISSANCE. book it.

^* Make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars. . . .
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see." ^

He wishes to represent on the stage

" One such to-day, as other plays shou'd be ;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas.
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please :
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen. . . .

But deeds, and language, such as men do use. . . .
You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men." ^

Men, as we see them in the streets, with their whims
and humours —

" When some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers
In their confluctions, all to run one way.
This may be truly said to be a humour." *

It is these humours which he exposes to the light, not
with the artists curiosity, but with the moralist's hate :

" I will scourge those apes.
And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror.
As large as is the stage whereon we act ;
Where they shall see the time's deformity
Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew,
With constant courage, and contempt of fear. . . .

My strict hand
Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe

* Every Man in his HumouTy Prologue.
* Ibid, » IMd.

CHAP. m. BEN JONSON, 23

Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls,
As lick up every idle vanity." ^

Doubtless a determination so strong and decided
does violence to the dramatic spirit. Jonson's comedies
are not rarely harsh ; his characters are too grotesque,
laboriously constructed, mere automatons; the poet
thought less of producing living beings than of scotching
a vice ; the scenes get arranged, or are confused together
in a mechanical manner ; we see the process, we feel
the satirical intention throughout ; delicate and easy-
flowing imitation is absenti as well as the graceful
fancy which abounds in Shakspeare. But if Jonson
comes across harsh passions, visibly evil and vile, he
will derive from his energy and wrath the talent to
render them odious and visible, and will produce a
Volpone, a sublime work, the sharpest picture of the
manners of the age, in which is displayed the full
brightness of evil lusts, in which lewdness, cruelty,
love of gold, shamelessness of vice, display a sinister
yet splendid poetry, worthy of one of Titian's baccha-
nals.^ All this makes itself apparent in the first scene,
when Volpone says :

" Good morning to the day ; and next, my gold !

Open the shrine, that I may see my saint."

This saint is his piles of gold, jewels, precious plate :

" Hail the world's soul, and mine ! . . . thou son of Sol,
But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,
With adoration, thee, and every relick
Of sacred treasure in this blessed room."^

1 Boery Man <nU of his Hwnour, Prologue.

' Compare Folpone with Regnard's Ugaiaire ; the end of the six
teenth with the beginning of the eighteenth century.
' Volpofne, i 1.

24 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Presently after, the dwarf, the eunuch, and the
hermaphrodite of the house sing a sort of pagan and
fantastic interlude; they chant in strange verses the
metamorphoses of the hermaphrodite, who was first the
soul of Pythagoras. We are at Venice, in the palace
of the magnifico Volpone. These deformed creatures^
the splendour of gold, this strange and poetical buffoon-
ery, carry the thought immediately to the sensual city^
queen of vices and of arts.

The rich Volpone lives like an ancient Greek or
Boman. Childless and without relatives, playing the
invalid, he makes all his flatterers hope to be his heir,
receives their gifts,

** Letting the cheny knock against their lips,
And draw it by their mouths, and back again." ^

Glad to have their gold, but still more glad to deceive
them, artistic in wickedness as in avarice, and just as
pleased to look at a contortion of suffering as at the
sparkle of a ruby.

The advocate Voltore arrives, bearing a " huge piece
of plate." Volpone throws himself on his bed, wraps
himself in furs, heaps up his pillows, and coughs as if
at the point of death :

" Volpone, I thank you, signior Voltore,
Where is the plate 1 mine eyes are bad. . . . Your love
Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswered . . .
I cannot now last long. . . I feel me going, —
Uh,uh, uh, uh!"'

He closes his eyes, as though exhausted :

1 Folpane, I 1. « Ibid. I 3.

CHAP, in, BEN JONSON. 25

'' VoUors, Am I inscrib'd Mb heir for certain )

Mosca (Volpon^t ParanU). Are you !

I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe
To write me in your fjEunily. All my hopes
Depend upon your worship : I am lost,
Except the rising sun do shine on me.

VoU, It shall both shine and warm thee, Mosca.
. M. Sir,

I am man, that hath not done your love
All the worst offices : here I wear your keys.
See all your coffers and your caskets lock'd,
Keep the poor inventory of your jeweb.
Tour plate and monies ; am your steward, sir.
Husband your goods here.

VoU. But am I sole heir 1

M, Without a partner, sir ; confirm'd this morning :

The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry

Upon the parchment.

VoU. Happy, happy, me !

By what good chance, sweet Mosca 1

M. Your desert, sir ;

I know no second cause." ^

And he details the abundance of the wealth in which
Voltore is about to revel, the gold which is to pour
upon him, the opulence which is to flow in his house
as a river :

" When will you have your inventory brought, sir 1
Or see a copy of the will 1 "

The imagination is fed with precise words, precise
details. Thus, one after another, the would-be heirs
come like beasts of prey. The second who arrives is
an old miser, Corbaccio, deaf, " impotent," almost dying,

^ Vblponef L 3.

26 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

who nevertheless hopes to survive Volpone. To make
more sure of it, he would fain have Mosca give his
master a narcotic. He has it about him, this excellent
opiate: he has had it prepared under his own eyes,
he suggests it. His joy on finding Volpone more ill
than himself is bitterly humorous :

" Chrbaceio, How does your patron 1 . . .

Mosca. His mouth

Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang.

C, Good.

M, A freezing numbness stiffens all bis joints,
And makes the colour of his flesh like lead.

a Tisgood.

M. His pulse beats slow, and dull

C. Grood symptoms still.

M, And firom his brain —

C I conceive you ; good.

M, Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum,
Forth the resolved comers of his eyes.

(7. Is't possible ? Yet I am better, ha !
How does he, with the swinuning of his head ?

M, 0, sir, 'tis past the scotomy ; he now
Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort :
You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes.

C, Excellent, excellent ! sure I shall outlast him :
This makes me young again, a score of years." ^

If you would be his heir, says Mosca, the moment is
favourable ; but you must not let yourself be forestalled.
Voltore has been here, and presented him with this
piece of plate :

** C. See, Mosca, look,

Here, I have brought a bag of bright chequines,
Will quite weigh down his plate. . . .

* Volpone^ i 4.

CHAP. HI. BEN JONSON. 27

M, Now, would I counsel you, make home with epeed ;
There, frame a will ; whereto you shall inscribe
My master your sole heir. . . .

a This plot

Did I think on before. . . .

M, And you so certain to survive him —

a Ay.

M. Being so lusty a man —

a 'Tis true." ^

And the old man hobbles away, not hearing the insults
and ridicule thrown at him, he is so deaf.

When he is gone the merchant Corvino arrives,
bringing an orient pearl and a splendid diamond :

" Coiviiio, Am I his heir 1

Mosca. Sir, I am sworn, I may not show the will
Till he be dead ; but here has been Corbaccio,
Here has been Voltore, here were others too,
I cannot number 'em, they were so many ;
All gaping here for legacies : but I,
Taking the vantage of his naming you,
Signior CarviriOy Signior Corvino, took
Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I asked him,
Whom he would have his heir 1 Corvino. Who
Should be executor ? Corvino. And,
To any question he was silent to,
I still interpreted the nods he made,
Through weakness, for consent : and sent home th' others,
Nothing bequeathed them, but to cry and curse.

Cor. my dear Mosca ! . . . Has he children )

M. Bastards,
Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars,
Gypsies, and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk. . . .

^ Vblpone, i. 4.

28 THE BENAISSANCK book il

Speak oat:
You may be loader yet . . .
Faith, I coald stifle him rarely with a pillow,
Ab well as any woman that shoald keep him.
C. Do as yoa will ; bat 111 begone." ^

Corvino presently departs; for the passions of the
time have all the beauty of frankness. And Yolpone,
casting aside his sick man's garb, cries :

" My divine Mosca !
Thoa hast to-day oat gone thyself. . . . Prepare
Me masic, dances, banqaets, all delights ;
The Tark is not more sensaal in his pleasares,
Than will Volpone." «

On this invitation, Mosca draws a most voluptuous
portrait of Cor\4no*s wife, Celia. Smitten with a
sudden desire, Volpone dresses liimself as a mountebank,
and goes singing under her windows with all the
sprightliness of a quack ; for he is naturally a comedian,
like a true Italian, of the same family as Scaramouch,
as good an actor in the public square as in his house.
Having once seen Celia, he resolves to obtain her at
any price :

" Mosca, take my keys,
Gk)ld, plate, and jewels, all's at thy devotion ;
Employ them how thou wilt ; nay, coin me too :
So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca." ^

Mosca then tells Corvino that some quack's oil has
cured his master, and that they are looking for a

» Volptme, i. 6. « Ibid, » Ibid, ii 2.

GHAP. m. BEN JONSON. 29

" young woman, lusty and full of juice," to complete
the cure:

'' Have you no kinswoman 1
Odso— Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, sir.
One o' the doctors offer'd there his daughter.
Corvino. How!

Moica, Yes, signior Lupo, the physician.

C. His daughter !

M. And a virgin, sir. . . .

a Wretch I

Goyetous wretch." ^

Though unreasonably jealous, Corvino is gradually
induced to offer his wifa He has given too much
already^ and would not lose his advantage. He is
like a half-ruined gamester, who with a shaking hand
throws on the green cloth the remainder of his fortune.
He brings the poor sweet woman, weeping and resisting.
Excited by his own hidden pangs, he becomes furious :

" Be damn'd !
Heart, I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair ;
Cry thee a strumpet through the streets ; rip up
Thy mouth unto thine ears ; and slit thy nose ;
Like a raw rochet ! — ^Do not tempt me ; come.
Yield, I am loth — ^Death I I will buy some slave
Whom I wiU kill, and bind thee to him, alive ;
And at my window hang you forth, devising
Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters,
WlQ eat into thy flesh with aquafortis.
And burning oorsives, on this stubborn breast.
Now, lyy the blood thou hast incensed. 111 do it !

CtUa, Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr.

Ccrwno, Be not thus obstinate, I have not deserv'd it :

^ Volpone^ iL 2.

30 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

Think who it is intrcats you. Prithee, sweet ; —

Good faith thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires.

What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him.

Or touch him, but. For my sake. — At my suit. —

Tliis once. — No ! not ! I shall remember this.

Will you disgrace me thus 1 Do you thirst my undoing ? " *

Mosca turned a moment before, to Volpone :

"Sir,
Signior Corvino . . . hearing of the consultation had
So lately, for your health, is come to offer,
Or rather, sir, to prostitute. —

Corviiio, Thanks, sweet Mosca.

Mosca, Freely, unask'd, or unintreated.

a WeU.

Mo8ca, As the true fervent instance of his love.
His own most fair and proper wife ; the beauty
Only of price in Venice. —

a Tis weU urg'd." 2

Wliere can we see such blows launched and driven
liard, full in the face, by the \aoleut hand of satire ?
Celia is alone with Volpone, who, throwing off his
feigned sickness, comes ii})on her, " as fresh, as hot, as
liigh, and in as jovial ])light," as on the gala-days of
the Republic, when he acted the part of the lovely
Antinous. In his transport he sings a love song; his
voluptuousness culminat<3S in poetry; for poetry was
then in Italy the blossom of vice. He spreads before
her pearls, diamonds, carbuncles. He is in raptures
at the sight of the treasures, which he displays and
sparkles before her eyes :

* Volpone y iii. 5. We pray the reader to pardon us for Ben Jonson*8
broadness. If I omit it, I cannot depict the sixteenth century. Grant
the same indulgence to the historian as to the anatomist

' Volponef iii

CHAP. m. BEN JONSON. 31

" Take these,
And wear, and lose them : yet remains an ear-ring
To purchase them again, and this whole state.
A gem but worth a private patrimony,
Is nothing : we will eat such at a meal,
The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales.
The brains of peacocks, and of estriches,
Shall be our food. . . .

Conscience ] Tis the beggar's virtue. . . .
Thy baths shall be the juice of July flowers,
Spirit of roses, and of violets.
The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath
Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines. ^
Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber ;
Which we wiU take, until my roof whirl round
With the vertigo : and my dwarf shall dance,
My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic.
Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales.
Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove,
Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine ;
So, of the rest, till we have quite run through,
And wearied all the fables of the gods.*' ^

We recognise Venice in this splendour of debauchery
— ^Venice, the throne of Aretinus, the country of Tintor-
etto and Giorgione. Volpone seizes Celia : " Yield, or
m force thee ! " But suddenly Bonario, disinherited
son of Corbaccio, whom Mosca had concealed there with
another design, enters violently, delivers her, wounds
Mosca, and accuses Volpone before the tribunal, of
imposture and rape.

The three rascals who aim at being his Jieirs, work
together to save Volpone. Corbaccio disavows his son,

^ Volpone, iii. 6.

32 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

and accuses him of parricide. Corvino declares his wife
an adulteress, the shameless mistress of Bonaria Never
on the stage was seen such energy of lying, such open
villany. The husband, who knows his wife to be inno-
cent, is the most eager :

" This woman (please your fieitherhoods) is a whore,
Of meet hot exercise, more than a partrich,
Upon record.

lit Advocate, No more.

Corvino. Neighs like a jemiet

Notary, Preserve the honour of the court

C. I shaU,

And modesty of your most reverend ears.
And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes
Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar,
That fine well-timber'd gallant ; and that here
The letters may be read, thorough the horn,
That make the story perfect. . . .

3dAdv, His grief hath made him frantic. (Cdianooani.)

a Rare ! PrettUy feign'd ! again ! " i

They have Volpone brought in, like a dying man ;
manufacture false " testimony, " to which Voltore gives
weight with his advocate's tongue, with words worth a
sequin apiece. They throw Celia and Bonario into
prison, and Volpone is saved. This public imposture
is for him only another comedy, a pleasant pastime,
and a masterpiece.

" Mosca. To gidl the court

Volpone, And quite divert the torrent
Upon the innocent. . . .

M, You are not taken with it enough, methinks.
V, 0, more than if I had eiy oy'd the wench V*^

1 Volpone, iv. 1. » Ibid. v. 1.

CHAT. m. BEN JONSON. 33

To conclude, he writes a will in Mosca's favour, has Ms
deaUi reported, hides behind a curtain, and enjoys the
looks of Uie would-be heirs. They had just saved him
from being thrown into prison, which makes the fun
all the better ; the wickedness will be all the greater
and more exquisite. " Torture 'em rarely," Volpone
Bays to Mosca. The latt«r spreads the will on the
table, and reads the inventory aloud. " Turkey carpets
nine. Two cabinets, one of ebony, the other mother-of-
pearL A perfum'd box, made of an onyx." The heirs
are stupefied with disappointment, and Mosca drives
them off with insults. He says to Corvino :
" Why should you stay here 1 with what thought, what promise t
Hear you ; do you not kaow, I know you an ass,
And that yon would most fain have been a wittol,
If fortune would have let you 1 That you are
A declar'd cuckold, on good tenns 1 This pearl,
You'll say, was youra J Right : this diamond 1
III not den/t, bat thank you. Uuch here else f
It may be so. Why, think that these good works
May help to hide your bad. [Exit Corvino^ . , ,

Corbaceiti. I am cozen'd, cheated, by a parasite slave ;
Harlot, thou hast gull'd me.

Motca, Ybb, sir. Stop your mouth.

Or I shall draw the only tooth is left.
Are not you he, that filthy covetous wretch.
With the three legs, that here, in hope of prey,
Have, any time this three years, snufft about.
With your most grov'ling nose, and would have bir'd
He to the pois'ning of my patron, sir 1
Are not you he that have to-day in court
Profess'd the disinheriting of your son 1
Feijur'd yourself) Go home, and die, aad stink." '
• Folpone, T. 1.

34 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Volpone goes out disguised, comes to each of them in
turn, and succeeds in wringing their hearts. But Mosca,
who has the will, acts with a high hand, and demands
of Volpone half his fortune. The dispute between
the two rascals discovers their impostures, and the
master, the servant, with the three would-be heirs, are
sent to the galleys, to prison, to the pilloiy — as Corvino
says, to

'' Have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish,
Bruia'd firuit, and rotten eggs. — ^*Tia weU. Fm glad,
I shall not see my shame yet.'' ^

No more vengeful comedy has been written, none more
persistently athirst to make vice suffer, to unmask,
triumph over, and punish it

Where can be the gaiety of such a theatre ? In cari-
cature and farce. There is a rough gaiety, a sort of
physical, external laughter which suits this combative,
drinking, blustering mood. It is thus that this mood
relaxes from war-waging cmd murderous satire ; the
pastime is appropriate to the manners of the time,
excellent to attract men who look upon hanging as a
good joke, and laugh to see the Puritan's ears cut.
Put yourself for an instant in their place, and you will
think like them, that The Silent Woman is a masterpiece.
Morose is an old monomaniac, who has a horror of noise,
but loves to speak. He inhabits a street so narrow that
a carriage cannot enter it. He drives off with his stick
the bear-leaders and sword-players, who venture to pass
imder his windows. He has sent away his ser\'^ant
whose shoes creaked ; and Mute, the new one, wears
slippers " soled with wool," and only speaks in a whisper

* Volpone^ V. 8.

CHAP. ni. BEN JONSON. 35

through a tube. Morose ends by forbidding the whisper,
and makes him reply by signs. He is also rich, an
uncle, and he ill-treats his nephew Sir Dauphine
Eugenie, a man of wit, but who lacks money. We
anticipate all the tortures which poor Morose is to
suffer. Sir Dauphine finds him a supposed silent
woman, the beautiful Epicoena Morose, enchanted by
her brief replies and her voice, which he can hardly hear,
marries her, to play his nephew a trick. It is his nephew
who has played him a trick. As soon as she is married,
Epicoene speaks, scolds, argues as loud and as long as a
dozen women : — " Why, did you think you had married
a statue ? or a motion only ? one of the French puppets,
with the eyes tum'd witii a wire ? or some innocent
out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands
thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you ?"^

She orders the servants to speak louder ; she opens
the doors wide to her friends. They arrive in shoals,
offering their noisy congratulations to Morose. Five or
six women's tongues overwhelm him all at once with
compliments, questions, advice, remonstrances. A
Mend of Sir Dauphine comes with a band of music,
who play all together, suddenly, with their whole force.
Morose says, " 0, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot, upon
me! This day I shall be their anvil to work on,
they will grate me asunder. 'Tis worse than the noise
of a saw." * A procession of servants is seen coming,
with dishes in their hands ; it is the racket of a tavern
which Sir Dauphine is bringing to his uncle. The
guests clash the glasses, shout, drink healths ; they
have with them a drum and trumpets which make
great noise. Morose flees to the top of the house, puts

^ Epkomt, iii 2. ' Ibid. m.2.

36 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

" a whole nest of night-caps" on his head and staffs
up his ears. Captain Otter cries, " Sound, Tritons o'
the Thames ! Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero,**
" Villains, murderers, sons of the earth and traitors," cries
Morose from above, " what do you there ? " The racket
increases. Then the captain, somewhat " jovial," maligns
his wife, who faUs upon him and gives hirn a good
beating. Blows, cries, music, laughter, resound like
thimder. It is the poetry of uproar. Here is a subject
to shake coarse nerves, and to make the mighty chests
of the companions of Drake and Essex shake with un-
controllable laughter. " Kogues, hell-hounds, Stentors I
. . . They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows
asimder, with their brazen throats ! " Morose casts him-
self on his tormentors with his long sword, breaks the
instruments, drives away the musicians, disperses the
guests amidst an inexpressible uproar, gnashing his teeth,
looking haggard. Aften^-ards they pronounce him mad,
and discuss his madness before him.^ The disease in
Greek is called /Aay/a, in Latin insania, furor, vel ecstasis
mduncholica that is, cgressio, when a man ex melancholico
evadit fanaticus. . . . But he may be but phreneticus
yet, mistress ; and phrenetis is only delirium, or so."
They tedk of the books which he must read aloud to
cure him. They add by way of consolation, that his
wife talks in her sleep, " and snores like a porpoise."
" redeem me, fate ; redeem me, fate ! " cries the poor
man.^ " For how many causes may a man be divorc'd,
nephew ? " Sir Dauphine chooses two knaves, and
disguises them, one as a priest, the other as a lawyer,
who launch at his head Latin terms of civil and canon
law, explain to Morose the twelve cases of nullity,

^ Compare M. de Pourceaugnac in Moli^rc. ' Epiaxne, iv. 1, 2.

CHAP. m. BEN JONSON. 37

jingle in his ears one after another the most barbarous
words in their obscure vocabulary, wrangle, and make
between them as much noise as a couple of bells in a
belfty. Following their advice he declares himself impo-
tent The wedding-guests propose to toss him in a
blanket ; others demand an immediate inspection. Fall
after fall, shame after shame ; nothing serves him ; his
wife declares that she consents to " take him with all his
faults." The lawyer proposes another legal method;
Morose shall obtain a divorce by proving that his wife
is faithless. Two boasting knights, who are present,
declare that they have been her lovers. Morose, in
raptures, throws himself at their knees, and embraces
them. Epiccene weeps, and Morose seems to be de-
livered. Suddenly the lawyer decides that the plan is
of no avail, the infidelity having been committed before
the marriage. " 0, this is worst of all worst worsts that
heU could have devis'd ! marry a whore, and so much
noise I " There is Morose then, declared impotent and
a deceived husband, at his own request, in the eyes of
the whole world, and moreover married for ever. Sir
Dauphine comes in like a clever rascal, and as a suc-
couring deity. " Allow me but five hundred during life,
uncle/' and I firee you. Morose signs the deed of gift
with alacrity ; and his nephew shows him that Epiccene
is a boy in disguisa^ Add to this enchanting farce the
funny ^rts of Ztwo accomplished and gallant knights,
who, after having boasted of their bravery, receive
gratefully, and before the ladies, flips and kicks.^ Never
was coarse physical laughter more adroitly produced.

^ EpieoBM^ T.

' Ck>mpare Polichinelle in Le Mdlade vmaginaire ; G^ronte in Les
Fourberiis de Scapin,

38 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

In this broad coarse gaiety, this excess of noisy trana-
port, you recognise the stout roysterer, the stalwart
drinker who swallowed hogsheads of Canary, and made
the windows of the Mermaid shake with his bursts of
humour.

V.

Jonson did not go beyond this ; he was not a philo-
sopher like Moli^re, able to grasp and dramatise the
crisis of human life, education, marriage, sickness, the
chief characters of his country and century, the courtier,
the tradesman, the hypocrite, the man of the world.*
He remained on a lower level, in the comedy of plot,*
the painting of the grotesque,* the representation of too
transient subjects of ridicule,* too general vices.* If at
times, as in the Alchemist, he has succeeded by the
perfection of plot caid the vigour of satire, he has mis-
carried more frequently by the ponderousness of his
work and the lack of comic lightness. The critic in
him mars the artist ; his literary calculations strip him
of spontaneous invention ; he is too much of a writer
and moralist, not enough of a mimic and an actor. But
he is loftier from another side, for he is a poet ; almost
all writers, prose-authors, preachers even, were so at the
time we speak of. Fancy abounded, as well as the
perception of colours and forms, the need and wont of
enjoying through the imagination and the eyes. Many
of Jonson's pieces, the Staple of News, Cynthia's Revels,

* Compare VEcole des Femmes^ Tartuffe^ Le Misanthrope^ Le Bour-
geois-gentilhomme, Le Mdlade irruiginaire, Otorges Dandin,

' Compare les FourberUs de Scapin,

* Compare les Fdchevx,

* Compare les Pricieuses Ridicules.
^ Compare the plays of Destouches.

CHAP. ra. BEN JONSON. 39

are fanciful and allegorical comedies like those of
Aristophanes. He there dallies with the real, and
beyond the real, with characters who are but theatrical
masks, abstractions personified, buffooneries, decorations,
dances, music, pretty laughing whims of a picturesque
and sentimental imagination. Thus, in Cynthia's Revels,
three children come on "pleading possession of the
cloke" of black velvet, which an actor usually wore
when he spoke the prologue. They draw lots for it ;
one of the losers, in revenge, tells the audience before-
hand the incidents of the piece. The others interrupt him
at every sentence, put their hands on his mouth, and
taking the cloak one after the other, begin to criticise
the spectators and authors. This child's play, these
gestures and loud voices, this little amusing dispute,
divert the pubUc from their serious thoughts, and pre-
pare them for the oddities which they are to look upon.

We are in Greece, in the valley of Gargaphie,
where Diana^ has proclaimed ''a solenm revels." Mer-
cury and Cupid have come down, and begin by
quarrelling; the latter says: "My light feather-heerd
coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's
pander ? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and
can whisper a light message to a loose wench with some
round volubility? . . . One that sweeps the gods'
drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in
order again, which they threw one at another^s head
over night ? " ^

They are good-tempered gods. Echo, awoke by
Mercury weeps for the " too beauteous boy Narcissus " :

" That trophy of self-loye, and spoil of nature,
Who, now transformed into thb drooping flower,

^ By Dianft, Queen Elizabeth is meant ' Cynthia* i Bevels, i 1.

40 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream. . • .
Witness thy youth's dear sweets, here spent mitasted.
Like a fair taper, with his own flame wasted I . . .
And with thy water let this curse remain,
As an inseparate plague, that who but taste
A drop thereof, may, with the instant touch.
Grow doatingly enamoured on themselves.** ^

The courtiers and ladies drink thereof, and behold, a
sort of a review of the follies of the time, arranged, as
in Aristophanes, in an improbable farce, a brilliant show.
A silly spendthrift, Asotns, wishes to become a man of
the court and of fashionable manners ; he takes for his
master Amorphus, a learned traveller, expert in gal-
lantry, who, to believe himself, is

<< An essence so sublimated and refined by travel • . • able
... to speak the mere extraction of language ; one that . . .
was your first that ever enrich'd his oountiy with the true laws
of the duello ; whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in
some eight-score and eighteen princes' courts, where I have
resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred
forty and five ladies, all nobly if not princely descended, . . .
in all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to fasten
her kisses upon me." ^

Asotus learns at this good school the language of the
court, fortifies himself like other people with quibbles,
learned oaths, and metaphors ; he fibres ofif in succession
supersubtle tirades, and duly imitates the grimaces and
tortuous style of his masters. Then, when he has
drunk the water of the fountain, becoming suddenly
pert and rash, he proposes to all comers a tourna-
ment of "court compliment" This odd tournament

1 Oynthia'8 Bevels, L 1. » Ihid.

CHAP. in. BEN JONSON. 41

is held before the ladies ; it comprises four jousts, 6Lnd
at each the trumpets sound. The combatants perform
in succession " the bare accost ; " " the better re-
gard;" "the SOLEMN ADDRESS;" and "the perfect
closk"^ In this grave buflFoonery the courtiers are
beaten. The severe Crites, the moralist of the play,
copies their language, and pierces them with their own
weapons. Already, with grand declamation, he had

rebuked them thus :

" yanity,
How are thy painted beauties doated on,
By light, and Bmpty idiots ! how pursued
With open and extended appetite 1
How they do sweat, and run themselyes from breath,
Eais'd on their toes, to catch thy airy forms.
Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards,
That buy the merry madness of one hour,
With the long irksomeness of following time 1 " ^

To complete the overthrow of the vices, appear two
symbolical masques, representing the contrary virtues.
They pass gravely before the spectators, in splendid
array, and the noble verses exchanged by the goddess
and her companions raise the mind to the lofty regions
of serene morality, whither the poet desires to carry us :

'' Queen, and huntress, chaste and &ir,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep. . . .
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver ;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soeyer." ^

1 OyiUhia'8 Sevels, v. 2. • Ihid, I 1. » OyiUhia'BlUveU, t. 3.

42 THE R£NAISSANCK book n.

In the end, bidding the dancers to unmask, Cynthia
shows that the vices have disguised themselves as
virtues. She condemns them to make fit reparation,
and to bathe themselves in Helicon. Two by two they
go off singing a palinode, whilst the chorus sings the
supplication " Good Mercury defend us." ^ Is it an
opera or a comedy ? It is a lyrical comedy ; and if we
do not discover in it the airy lightness of Aristophanes,
at least we encounter, as in the Birds and the Frogs,
the contrasts and medleys of poetic invention, which,
through caricature and ode, the real and the impossible,
the present and the past, sent forth to the four
quarters of the globe, simultaneously unites all kinds
of incompatibilities, and culls all flowers.

Jonson went further than this, and entered the
domain of pure poetry. He wrote delicate, voluptuous,
charming love poems, worthy of the ancient idyllic
muse.^ Above all, he was the great, the inexhaustible
inventor of Masques, a kind of masquerades, ballets,
poetic choruses, in which all the magnificence and the
imagination of the English Eenaissance is displayed.
The Greek gods, and all the ancient Olympus, the
allegorical personages whom the artists of the time deli-
neate in their pictures ; the antique heroes of popular
legends ; £(11 worlds, the actual, the abstract, the divine,
the himian, the ancient, the modem, are searched by
his hands, brought on the stage to furnish costumes,
harmonious groups, emblems, songs, whatever can excite,
intoxicate the artistic sense. The dlite, moreover, of the
kingdom is there on the stage. They are not mounte-
banks moving about in borrowed clothes, clumsily

* Cynthia* 8 Bevels, last scene.
^ CelebratUm of CharxB — MiaceUaneofm Poems,

CHAP. m. BEN JONSON. 43

worn, for which they are still in debt to the tailor;
they are ladies of the courts great lords, the queen, in
all the splendour of their rank and pride, with real
diamonds, bent on displaying their riches, so that the
whole splendour of the national life is concentrated in
the opera which they enact, like jewels in a casket.
What dresses ! what profusion of splendours ! what
medley of strange characters, gipsies, witches, gods,
heroes, pontiffs, gnomes, fantastic beings ! How many
metamorphoses, jousts, dances, marriage songs I What
variety of scenery, architecture, floating isles, triimiphal
arches, symbolic spheres ! Gold glitters ; jewels flash ;
purple absorbs the lustre-lights in its costly folds;
streams of light shine upon the crumpled silks;
diamond necklaces, darting flame, clasp the bare bosoms
of the ladies ; strings of pearls are displayed, loop after
loop, upon the silver-sown brocaded dresses ; gold em-
broidery, weaving whimsical arabesques, depicts upon
their dresses flowers, Ifruits, and figures, setting picture
within picture. The steps of the throne bear groups
of Cupids, each with a torch in his hand.^ On either
side the fountains cast up plumes of pearls ; musicians,
in purple 6uid scarlet, laurel-crowned, make harmony in
the bowers. The trains of masques cross, commingling
their groups ; " the one half in orange-tawny and silver,
the otiber in sea-green and silver. The bodies and short
skirts (were of) white and gold to both."

Such pageants Jonson wrote year after year, almost
to the end of his life, true feasts for the eyes, like the pro-
cessions of Titian. Even when he grew to be old, his
imagination, like that of Titian, remained abimdant and
fresh. Though forsaken, lying gasping on his bed, feel-

^ Masque of Beauty.

44 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

ing the approach of death, in his supreme bitterness lie
did not lose his faculties, but wrote The Sad Shepherd,ih%
most graceful and pastoral of his pieces. Consider that
this beautiful dream arose in a sick-chamber, amidst
medicine bottles, physic, doctors, with a nurse at his side,
amidst the anxieties of poverty and the choking-fits of
a dropsy 1 He is transported to a green forest, in the
days of Sobin Hood, amidst the gay chase and the great
barking greyhounds. There are the malicious fairies^
who like Oberon and Titania, lead men to flounder in
mishaps. There are open-souled lovers, who like
Daphne and Chloe, taste with awe the painful sweet-
ness of the first kiss. There lived Earine, whom the
stream has " suck'd in," whom her lover, in his mad-
ness, will not cease to lament :

''Earine,
Who had her very being, and her name
With the first knots or buddings of the spring,
Bom with the primrose or the violet,
Or earliest roses blown : when Cupid smil'd,
And Venus led the graces out to dance.
And all the flowers and sweets in nature's lap
Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration
To last but while she liv'd ! " . . . ^
*' But she, as chaste as \vas her name, Earine,
Died undeflower'd : and now her sweet soul hovers
Here in the air above us." -

Above the poor old paralytic artist, poetry still
hovers like a haze of light. Yes, he had cumbered
himself with science, clogged himself with theories,
constituted himself theatrical critic and social censor,

1 Tht Sad Shepherd, i. 2. » Ibid, iii. 2.

CHAP. in. BEN JONSON. 46

filled his soul with unrelenting indignation, fostered a
combative and morose disposition ; but divine dreams
never left him. He is the brother of Shakspeare.

VI.

So now at last we are in the presence of one, whom
we perceived before us through all the vistas of the
Benaissance, like some vast oak to which all the forest
ways converge. I will treat of Shakspeare by himself. In
order to take him in completely, we must have a wide
and open space. And yet how shall we comprehend
him ? how lay bare Ms inner constitution ? Lofty words,
eulogies, are all used in vain ; he needs no praise, but
comprehension merely; and he can only be compre-
hended by the aid of science. As the complicated
revolutions of the heavenly bodies become intelligible
only by use of a superior calculus, as the delicate trans-
formations of vegetation and life need for their explana-
tion the intervention of the most diflBcult chemical for-
mulas, so the great works of art can be interpreted only
by the most advanced psychological systems ; and we
need the loftiest of all these to attain to Shakspeare's
level — to the level of his age and his work, of Ms genius
and of his art

After all practical experience and accumulated
observations of the soul, we find as the result that
wiBdom and knowledge are in man only effects and
fortuities. Man has no permanent and distinct force
to secure truth to his intelligence, and common sense to
Ms conduct. On the contrary, he is naturally unreason-
able and deceived. The parts of Ms inner mechanism
are like the wheels of clock-work, wMch go of themselves.

46 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

blindly, carried away by impulse and weight, and which
yet sometimes, by virtue of a certain unison, end by
indicating the hour. This final intelligent motion is
not natural, but fortuitous ; not spontaneous, but forced ;
not innate, but acquired. The clock did not always go
regularly ; on the contrary, it had to be regulated little
by little, with much difficulty. Its regularity is not
ensured ; it may go wrong at any time. Its r^ularity
is not complete ; it only approximately marks the time.
The mechanical force of each piece is always ready to
drag all the rest from their proper action, and to dis-
arrange the whole agreement So ideas, once in the mind,
pull each their o\\ti way blindly and separately, and their
imperfect agreement threatens confusion every moment
Strictly speaking, man is mad, as the body is ill, by
nature ; reason and liealth come to us as a momentary
success, a lucky accident.^ If we forget this, it is be-
cause we are now regidated, dulled, deadened, and
because our internal motion has become gradually, by
fricticm and reparation, half harmonised with the motion
of things. But this is only a semblance; and the danger-
ous primitive forces remain untameil and independent
under the oixler which seems to restrain them. Let a
great danger arise, a revolution take place, they will
break out and explode, almost as terribly as in earlier
times. For an idea is not a mere inner mark, employed
to designate one aspect of things, inert, always ready to
fall into order with other similar ones, so as to make
an exact whole. However it may be reduced and dis-
ciplined, it still retains a sensible tinge which shows

* This itlca may he expanded psj'chologically : external perception,
memory, are real hallucinations, etc. This is the analytical aspect :
under another aspect reason and health are the natural goals.

CHAP. ni. BEN JONSON. 47

its likeness to an hallucination ; a degree of individual
persistence which shows its likeness to a monomania ;
a network of singular affinities which shows its likeness
to the ravings of deliriimL Being such^ it is beyond
question the rudiment of a nightmare, a habit, an ab-
surdity. Let it become once developed in its entirety,
as its tendency leads it/ and you will find that it is
essentially an active and complete image, a vision draw-
ing along with it a train of dreams and sensations, which
increases of itself, suddenly, by a sort of rank and absorb-
ing growth, and which ends by possessing, shaking, ex-
hausting the whole man. After this, another, perhaps
entirely opposite, tmd so on successively : there is
nothing else in man, no tree and distinct power ; he is in
himself but the process of these headlong impulses tmd
swarming imaginations : civilisation has mutilated, at-
tenuated, but not destroyed them; shocks, collisions,
transports, sometimes at long intervals a sort of transient
partial equilibrium : this is his real life, the life of a
lunatic, who now and then simulates reason, but who is
in reality ''such stuff as dreams are made on ;"^ and
this is man, as Shakspeare has conceived him. No
writer, not even Moli^re, has penetrated so far beneath
the semblance of common sense and logic in which the
human machine is enclosed, in order to disentangle the
brute powers which constitute its substance and its
mainspring.

How did Shakspeare succeed ? and by what extra-
ordinary instinct did he divine the remote conclusions,
the deepest insights of physiology and psychology ?
He had a complete imagination ; his whole genius lies

^ See Spinoza and Dngald Stewart : Conception in its natoral state
s belie! ' Tempest, iv. 1.

48 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

in that complete imagiuation. These words seem com-
monplace and void of meaning. Let us examine them
closer, to understand what they contain. When we think
a thing, we, ordinary men, we only think a part of it ;
we see one side, some isolated mark, sometimes two or
three marks together ; for what is beyond, our sight
fails us ; the infinite network of its infinitely-complicated
and multiplied properties escapes us ; we feel vaguely
that there is something beypnd our shallow ken, and
this vague suspicion is the only part of our idea which
at all reveals to us the great beyond. We are like tyro-
naturalists, quiet people of limited understanding, who,
wishing to represent an animal, recall its name and ticket
in the musexmi, with some indistinct image of its hide
and figure ; but their mind stops there. If it so happens
that they wish to complete their knowledge, they lead
their memory, by regular classifications, over the princi-
pal characters of the animal, and slowly, discursively,
piecemeal, bring at last the bare anatomy before their
eyes. To this their idea is reduced, even when perfected;
to this also most frequently is our conception reduced,
even when elaborated. What a distance there is between
this conception and the object, liow imperfectly and
meanly the one represents the other, to what extent
this mutilates that ; how the consecutive idea, dis-
jointed in little, regularly arranged and inert fragments,
resembles but slightly the organised, living thing, created
simultaneously, ever in action, and ever transformed,
words cannot explain. Picture to yourself, instead of
this poor dry idea, propped up by a miserable mechani-
cal linkwork of thought, the complete idea, that is, an
inner representation, so abundant and full, that it ex-
hausts all the properties and relations of the object, all

CHAP. ui. BEN JONSON. 49

its inward and outward aspects ; that it exhausts them
instantaneously ; that it conceives of the entire animal,
its colour, the play of the light upon its skin, its form,
the quivering of its outstretched limbs, the flash of its
eyes, tuid at the same time its passion of the moment,
its excitement, its dash ; and beyond this its instincts,
their composition, their causes, their history ; so that
the himdred thousand characteristics which make up its
condition and its nature find their analogues in the imagi-
nation which concentrates and reflects them : there you
have the artist's conception, the poet's — Shakspeare's ;
80 superior.to that of the logician, of the mere savant
or man of the world, the only one capable of penetrating
to the very essence of existences, of extricating the
inner from beneath the outer man, of feeling through
sympathy, and imitating without effort, the irregular
oscillation of human imaginations tmd impressions, of re-
producing life with its infinite fluctuations, its apparent
contradictions, its concealed logic ; in short, to create
as nature creates. This is what is done by the other
artists of this age ; they have the same kind of mind,
and the some idea of life : you will find in Shakspeare
only the same faculties, witli a still stronger impulse ;
the same idea, with a still more prominent relief.

VOL. n. E

50 THE RENAISSANCR book u.

CHAPTER IV.

I AM alx)\it to describe an extraordinary species of mind,
perjJexing to all the French modes of analysis and
reasoning, all-powerful, excessive, master of the sublime
as well as of the base ; the most creative mind that
ever engaged in the exact copy of the details of actual
existence, in the dazzling ca])rice of fancy, in the pro-
found com])lications of superhuman passions ; a nature
poetical, immonil, inspired, superior to reason by the
sudden revelations of its seer's madness ; so extreme
in joy and grief, so abrupt of gait, so agitated and im-
petuous in its transports, that this great age alone could
have cradled such a child.

I.

Of Shakspeare all came from within — I mean from
his sold and his genius ; circumstances and the externals
contributed but slightly to his development^ He was
intimately bound up with liis age ; that is, he knew by
experience the manners of country, court, and town ; he
had visited the heights, depths, the middle ranks of man-
kind ; notliing more. In all other respects, his life was
commonplace ; its irregularities, troubles, passions, suc-

^ RalhT^iiU:B Life of Shakapearc

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 51

cesses, were, on the whole, such as we meet with every-
where else.^ His father, a glover and wool-stapler, in
very easy circiunstances, having married a sort of country
heiress, had become high-bailiff and chief alderman in
his little town ; but when Shakspeare was nearly four-
teen he was on the verge of ruin, mortgaging his wife's
property, obliged to resign his municipal offices, and to
remove, his son from school to assist him in his business.
The yoxmg fellow applied himself to it as well as he
could, not without some scrapes and frolics : if we are
to believe tradition, he was one of the thirsty souls of
the place, with a mind to support the reputation of his
little town in its drinking powers. Once, they say,
having been beaten at Bideford in one of these ale-bouts,
he returned staggering from the fight, or rather could
not return, and passed the night with his comrades
imder an apple-tree by the roadside. Without doubt
lie had already begun to write verses, to rove about
like a genuine poet, taking part in the noisy rustic
feasts, the gay allegorical pastorals, the rich and bold
outbreak of pagan and poetical life, as it was then to
be found in an English village. At all events, he was
not a pattern of propriety, and his passions were as
precocious as they were imprudent While not yet
nineteen years old, he married the daughter of a sub-
stantial yeoman, about eight years older than himself —
and not too soon, as she was about to become a mother.^
Other of his outbreaks were no more fortunate. It

^ Bom 1564, died 1616. He adapted plays as early as 1591. The
first play entirely from his pen appeared in 1593. — Payne Collier.

^ Mr. Halliwell and other commentators try to prove that at this
time the preliminary trothplight was regarded as the real marriage ;
that this trothplight had taken place, and that there was therefore no
izregolarity in Shakapeare's conduct.

52 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

seems that he was fond of poaching, after the manner
of the time, being " much given to all unluckinesse in
stealing venison and rabbits," says the Rev. Bichard
Davies;^ "particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who
had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at
last made him fly the country ; . . . but his revenge
w^as so great, that he is liis Justice Clodpate." More-
over, about this time Shakspeare's father was in prison,
his affairs were not prosperous, and he himself had
three children, following one close upon the other; he
must live, and life was hardly possible for him in his
native town. He went to London, and took to the
stage : took the lowest parts, was a " servant " in the
theatre, that is, an apprentice, or perhaps a supernum-
erary. They even said that he had begun still lower,
and that to earn his bread ho had held gentlemen's
horses at the door of the theatre.^ At all events he
tasted misery, and felt, not in imagination, but in fjeuct,
the sharp tliom of care, himiiliation, disgust, forced
labour, public discredit, the power of the people. He
was a comedian, one of " His Majesty's poor players/* ■
— a sad trade, d^raded in all ages by the contrasts
and the falsehoods which it allows : still more degraded
then by the brutalities of the crowd, who not seldom
would stone the actors, and by the severities of the
magistrates, who would sometimes condemn them to
lose their ears. He felt it, and spoke of it with
bitterness :

^ Halliwell, 123.

' All these anecdotes are traditions, and conseqaentlj mora or Um
doubtful ; but the other facts are authentic.

' Terms of an extant document He is named along with Barbadge
and Greene.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 53

'' Alas, 'tis true I liave gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear." ^

And again:

'' When in disgrace with fortune' and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state.
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope.
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed. . . .
With what I most eiyoy contented least ;
Yet in those thoughts myself almost despising." '

We shall find further on the traces of this long-endur-
ing disgust, in his melancholy characters, as ^here he
says:

'' For who would bear the whips and scorns of time.
The oppressors wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
Wh^ he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin]"*

But the worst of this undervalued position is, that it eats
into the soul. In the company of actors we become
actors : it is vain to wish to keep clean, if you live in a
dirty place ; it cannot be. No matter if a man braces
himself; necessity drives him into a comer and sullies

^ Scnfut 110.

^ See Sonnets 91 and 111 ; also Hamlet, uL 2. Many of Hamlet's
words would come better from the month of an actor than a prince.
See also the 66th Sonnet, '* Tired with all these."

> Sonnet 29. * Mamlet, iiL 1.

54 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

him. The machinery of the decorations, the tawdriness
and medley of the costumes, the smell of the tallow and
the candles, in contrast with the parade of refinement
and loftiness, all the cheats and sordidness of the
representation, the bitter alternative of hissing or
applause, the keeping of the highest and lowest com-
pany, the habit of sporting ydth human passions, easily
unliinge the soul, drive it down the slope of excess,
tempt it to loose manners, green-room adventures, the
loves of strolling actresses. Shakspeare escaped them
no more than Moli^re, and grieved for it, like Moli&re :

" 0, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds." ^

They used to relate in London, how his comrade Bur-
badge, who played Richard III., having a rendezvous
with the wife of a citizen, Shakspeare went before, was
well received, and was pleasantly occupied, when
Burbadge arrived, to whom he sent the message, that
William the Conqueror came before Richard III.* We
may take this as an example of the tricks and some-
what coarse intrigues wliich are planned, and follow in
quick succession, on this stage. Outside the theatre
he lived with fashionable young nobles, Pembroke,
Montgomery, Southampton,® and others, whose hot and
licentious youth gratified his imagination and senses
by the example of Italian pleasures and elegancies.

^ Sonnet 111.

' Anecdote written in 1602 on the authority of Tooley the actor.
' The Earl of Southampton was nineteen years old when Shakspeare
dedicated his Adonis to him.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 65

Add to this the rapture and transport of poetical nature,
and this kind of afflux, this boiling over of all the
powers and desires which takes place in brains of this
kind, when the world for the first time opens before
them, and you will understand the Venus and Adonis,
" the first heir of his invention." In fact, it is a first
cry, a cry in which the whole mjui is displayed. Never
was seen a heart so quivering to the touch of beauty,
of beauty of every kind, so delighted with the freshness
and splendour of things, so eager and so excited in
adoration and enjoyment, so violently and entirely
carried to the very essence of voluptuousness. His
Venus ia unique; no painting of Titian's has a more
brilliant and delicious colouring ;^ no strumpet-goddess
of Tintoretto or Giorgione is more soft and beautiful :

** With blmdfold fury she begms to forage,
Her &ce doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil. . . .

And glutton-like she feeds, jet never fiUeth ;
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,
Paying what ransom the insulter willeth ;
Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high,
That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.''^

" Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,
Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
Till either gorge be stuflTd or prey be gone ;
Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin,
And where she ends she doth anew begin." '

All is taken by storm, the senses first, the eyes dazzled
by carnal beauty, but the heart also from whence the

^ See Titian's picture, Loves of the Gods, at Blenheim.
* Fenua and Adonia, U 548-553. ' Ibid, I 55-60.

56 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

poetry overflows : the fulness of youth inundates even
inanimate things ; the country looks charming amidst
the rays of the rising sun, the air, saturated with
brightness, makes a gala-day ;

" Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty ;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burmsh'd gold." ^

An admirable debauch of imagination and rapture, yet
disquieting; for such a mood will carry one a long
way.^ No fair and frail dame in London was without
Adonis on her table.^ Perhaps Shakspeare perceived
that he had transcended the bounds, for the tone of his
next poem, the Iia2)€ of Lwcrect, is quite different ; but
as he had already a mind liberal enough to embrace at
the same time, as he did afterwards in his dramas, the
two extremes of things, he continued none the less to
foUow his bent. The " sweet abandonment of love "
was the great occupation of his life ; he was tender-
hearted, and he was a poet : nothing more is required
to be smitten, deceived, to suffer, to traverse without
pause the circle of illusions and troubles, which whirls
and whirls round, and never ends.

He had many loves of tliis kind, amongst others one
for a sort of Marion Delorme,* a miserable deluding de-

^ Vtfn.vA and Adonis^ I, 863-858.

^ Compare the first pieces of Alfred de Musset, Conies (Fltalie et
dCEspagne,

• Crawley, quoted by Ph. Chasles, Ettides sur Shakspeare,

* A famed French courtesan (1613-1650), the heroine of a drama of
that name, by Victor Hugo, having for its subject-matter: "LoTe
purifies everything. "—Te.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 67

spotic passion, of which he felt the burden and the
shame, but from which nevertheless he could not and
would not free himself. Nothing can be sadder than
his confessions, or mark better the madness of love, and
the sentiment of human weakness :

'' When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do belieye her, though I know she lies." ^

So spoke Alceste of C^limfene ;^ but what a soiled C^li-
mine is the creature before whom Shakspeare kneels,
with as much of scorn as of desire !

'' Those lips of thine,
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Bobb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee.'' '

This is plain-speaking and deep shamelessness of soul,
such as we find only in the stews ; and these are the
intoxications, the excesses, the delirium into which the
most refined artists fall, when they resign their own
noble hand to these soft, voluptuous, and clinging ones.
They are higher than princes, and they descend to the
lowest depths of sensual passion. Good and evil then
lose their names ; all things are inverted :

'' How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name !
0, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose !

> S(mf%d 188.

^ Two characters in Moliire*8 Misanthrope. The scene referred to
is Act V. sc 7.— Tr. » Sonnet 142.

58 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

•
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,

Making lascivious comments on thy sport,

Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise ;

Naming thy name blesses an ill report." ^

What are proofs, the will, reason, honour itself, when
the passion is so absorbing ? What can be said further
to a man who answers, " I know all that you are going
to say, and what does it all amount to ?" Great loves
are inundations, which dro^^Ti all repugnance and all
delicacy of soul, all preconceived opinions and all
received principles. Thenceforth the heart is dead to
all ordinary pleasures : it can only feel and breathe on
one side. Shakspeare envies the keys of the instrument
over which his mistress' fingers run. If he looks at
flowers, it is she whom he pictures beyond them ; and
the extravagant splendours of dazzling poetry spring up
in him repeatedly, as soon as he thinks of those glow-
ing black eyes :

" From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him." ^

He saw none of it :

" Nor did I wonder at the lily's white.
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose." '

All this sweetness of si)ring was but her perfume and
her shade :

" The forward violet thus I did chide :
* Sweet tliief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells.
If not from my love's breath ? The purple pride,

» Sonna 95. > Sonnet 98. » Ibid,

A

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 69

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.'
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair :
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair :
A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath ; . . .
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee." ^

Passionate archness, delicious aflTectations, worthy of
Heine and the contemporaries of Dante, which tell us
of long rapturous dreams concentrated on one object
Under a sway so imperious and sustained, what senti-
ment could maintain its ground? That of family?
He was married and had children, — a family which he
went to see " once a year ; " and it was probably on
his return from one of these journeys that he used the
words above quoted. Conscience? "Love is too
young to know what conscience is." Jealousy and
anger?

" For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason." ^

Bepulses?

" He is contented thy poor drudge to be
To stand in thy afiOEdrs, fall by thy side." ^

He is no longer young; she loves another, a hand-
some, young, light-haired fellow, his own dearest friend,
whom he has presented to her, and whom she wishes
to seduce:

^ Sonna 99. » S(mnet 151. ' Ibid,

60 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

" Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still :
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worscr spirit a woman coloor'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side." ^

And when she has succeeded in this,^ he dares not
confess it to himself, but suffers all, like Moli^re.
What wretchedness is there in these trifles of every-day
life! How man's thoughts instinctively place by
Shakspeare's side the great unhappy French poet
(Moli^re), also a philosopher by nature, but more of a
professional laugher, a mocker of old men in love, a
bitter railer at deceived husbands, who, after having
played in one of his most approved comedies, said aloud
to a friend, "My dear fellow, I am in despair; my
wife does not love me ! " Neither glory, nor work,
nor invention satisfy these vehement souls : love alone
can gratify them, because, with their senses and heart,
it contents also their brain; and all the powers of
man, imagination like the rest, find in it their concen-
tration and their employment " Love is my sin," he
said, as did Musset and Heine ; and in the Sonnets we
find traces of yet other passions, equally abandoned ;
one in particular, seemingly for a great lady. The first
half of his dramas, Midmimmcr Nights Dream, Romeo
and Juliet, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, preser\'e the
warm imprint more completely ; and we have only to

* Sonnet 144 ; also the Passionate Pilgrim, 2.

' This new interpn'tation of the Sonnets is due to the ingenious and
learned conjectures of M. Ph. Chasles. — For a short history of these
Sonnets, see Dyee's Shaksiyeare, i. pp. 96-102. This learned editor says :
** I contend that allusions scattered through the whole series are not to
be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of Shakspeare.'* — ^Tb.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 61

consider his latest women's character/ to see with
what exquisite tenderness, what fuU adoration, he loved
them to the end.

In this is all his genius ; his was one of those deli-
cate souls which, like a perfect instrument of music,
vibrate of themselves at the slightest toucL This fine
sensibility was the first thing observed in him. " My
darling Shakspeare," " Sweet Swan of Avon : " these
words of Ben Johnson only confirm what his contem-
poraries reiterata He was affectionate and kind, "civil
in demeanour, and excellent in the qualitie he pro>
fesses ;"^ if he had the impulse, he had also the efPosion
of true artists ; he was loved, men were delighted in
his company ; nothing is more sweet or winning than
this charm, this half-feminine abandonment in a man.
His wit in conversation was ready, ingenious, nimble ;
his gaiety brilliant; his imagination fluent, and so
copious, that, as his friends tell us, he never erased

^ Minwda, Desdemona, Viola. The following are the first words of
the Duke in Ttodflh Night :—

" If music be the food of love, play on ;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again ! it had a dying fall :
O, it came o*er my ear like the sweet south.
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour 1 Enough ; no more :
Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love ! how quick and fresh art thou.
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Beceiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soever,
But faUs into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute : so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high-fantastical."

' H. Chettle, in repudiating Greene's sarcasm, attributed to him.

62 THE RENAISSANCE. book u.

what he had written ; — at least when he wrote out a
scene for the second time, it was the idea which he
would change, not the words, by an after-glow of poetic
thought, not with a painful tinkering of the verse. All
these characteristics are combined into a single one :
he had a sympathetic genius ; I mean that naturally
he knew how to forget himself and become transfused
into all the objects which he conceived. Look around
you at the great artists of your time, try to approach
them, to l>ecome acquainted with them, to see them as
they think, and you will ol)ser\'e the fidl force of this
word. By an extraordinarj' instinct, they put themselves
at once in a ]>osition of existences ; men, animals,
flowers, plants, landsaipes, whatever the objects are, liv-
ing or not, they feel by intuition the forces and tenden-
cies wliich ])roduce the visible external; and tlieirsoul,
infinitely com])lex, becomes by its ceaseless metamor-
phoses, a sort of abstract of the universe. Tliis is why
they seem to live more than other men ; they have no
need to be taught, they divine. I have seen such a
man, apropos of a jiiece of annour, a costume, a collec-
tion of furniture, enter into the middle-age more fully
than three savants together. Tliey reconstruct, as
they l.)uild, naturally, surely, by an inspiration wliich
is a winged chain of reasoning. Shakspeare had only
an imperfect education, " small Latin and less Greek,"
barely French and Italian,^ nothing else ; he had not
travelled, he had only read the current literature of his
day, he had picked up a few law words in the court of
his little town : reckon up, if you can, all that he knew
of man and of history. These men see more objects

^ Dyce, Shakspeare^ i. 27 : "Of French and Italian, I apprehend,
he knew but little."— Tb.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 63

at a time ; they grasp them more closely than other
men, more quickly and thoroughly ; their mind is full,
and runs over. They do not rest in simple reasoning ;
at every idea their whole being, reflections, images,
emotions, are set aquiver. See them at it ; they
gesticulate, mimic their thought, brim over with com-
parisons ; even in their talk they are imaginative and
original, with familiarity and boldness of speech, some-
times happily, always irregularly, according to the
whims and starts of the adventurous improvisation.
The animation, the brilliancy of their language is mar-
vellous; so are their fits, the wide leaps with which
they couple widely-removed ideas, annihilating distance,
passing from pathos to humour, from vehemence to
gentleness. This extraordinary rapture is the last
thing to quit them. If perchance ideas fail, or if their
melancholy is too violent, they still speak and produce,
even if it be nonsense: they become clowns, though
at their own expense, and to their own hurt. I know
one of these men who wiU talk nonsense when he
thinks he is dying, or has a mind to kill himself ; the
inner wheel continues to turn, even upon nothing, that
wheel which man must needs see ever turning, even
though it tear him as it turns ; his buffoonery is an .
outlet : you wiU find him, this inextinguishable urchin,
this ironical puppet, at Ophelia's tomb, at Cleopatra's
death-bed, at Juliet's funeral High or low, these
men must always be at some extreme. They feel their
good and their ill too deeply ; they expatiate too abun-
dantly on each condition of their soul, by a sort of in-
voluntary noveL After the traducings and the disgusts
by which they debase themselves beyond measure, they
rise and become exalted in a marvellous fashion, even

64 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

trembling with pride and joy. " Haply," says Shak-
8i)eare, after one of these dull moods :

** Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate." ^

Tlien all fades away, as in a furnace where a stronger
flare than usual has left no substance fuel behind it

" That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
UiKjn those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou sce'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest." ' . . .

" No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Tlian you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell :
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it ; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe." '

These sudden alternatives of joy and sadness, divine
transports and f^ind melancholies, exquisite tenderness
and womanly depressions, depict the poet, extreme in
emotions, ceaselessly troubled with grief or merriment^
feeling the slightest shock, more strong, more dainty in
enjoyment and sufiering than other men, capable of
more intense and sweeter dreams, within whom is

^ Sonnet 29. ^ SonnU 73. * Sonnet 71.

CHAP. rv. SHAESPEABE. 65

stiired an im^inaiy world of graceful or terrible beings,
all impassioned like their author.

Such as I have described him, hotrever, he found his
resting-place. Early, at least what r^ards outward
appearances, he settled down to an orderly, sensible,
almost humdrum existence, engi^ed in business, pro-
vident of the fntura He remained on the st^e for at
least seventeen years, though taking secondary parts;*
he sets his wits at the same time to the touching up of
plays with so much activity, that Greene called him
" an upstart crow beautified with our featheiB ; ... an
absolute Johannes factotwm, in his owne conceyt the
onely shake-scene in a countrey."^ At the i^e of
thirty-three he had amassed money enough to buy at
Stratford a house with two bams and two gardens, and
he went on steadier and steadier in the same course.
A man attains only to easy circumstances by his own
labour; if he gains wealth, it is by making others
labour for him. This is why, to the trades of actor and
author, Sbakspeare added those of manager and director
of a theatre. He acquired a share in the Blackfriars
and Globe theatres, farmed tithes, bought laige pieces
of land, more houses, gavo a dowry to his daughter
Susanna, and finally retired to his native town on his
property, in his own house, like a good landlord, an
honest citizen, who manages his fortune Edy, and takes
his share of municipal work. He had an income of
two or three himdred pounds, which would be equiva-
lent to about e^ht or twelve hundred at the present
time, and according to tradition, lived cheerfully and
on good terms with his neighbours ; at all events, it

' The part in whicli ho excelled was that of the ghost in HamUL

* QTe«De'« A OnMtmitrA of H'it, etc.
VOL. n. F

66 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

does not seem that ho thought much about his literaiy
glory, for he did not even take the trouble to collect
and publish his works. One of his daughters married
a physician, the other a wine merchant ; the last did
not even know how to sign her name. He lent money,
and cut a good figure in this little world. Strange
close ; one which at first sight resembles more that of
a shopkeeper than of a poet Must we attribute it to
that English instinct which places happiness in the life
of a country gentleman and a landlord with a good
rent-roll, well connected, surrounded by comforts, who
quietly enjoys his undoubted respectability/ his do-
mestic authority, and his county standing ? Or rather,
was Shakspeare, like Voltaire, a common-sense man,
though of an imaginative brain, keeping a sound
judgment under the sparkling of his genius, prudent
from scepticism, saving through a desire for independ-
ence, and capable, after going the round of human ideas,
of deciding with Candide,^ tliat the best thing one can
do in this world is " to cultivate one's garden ?" I had
rather think, as his fuU and solid head suggests,' that
by the mere force of his overflowing imagination he
escaped, like Goethe, the perils of an overflowing im-
agination ; that in depicting passion, he succeeded, like
Goethe, in deadening passion; that the fire did not
break out in his conduct, because it found issue in his
poetry; that his theatre kept pure his life; and that^
having passed, by sympathy, through every kind of
folly and wretchedness that is incident to human ex-

* "He was a respectable man.'' **A good word ; what does it
mean ? " " He kept a gig."— (From ThurteU's trial for the mnider of
Weare.)

^ The model of an optimist, the hero of one of Voltaire's tales. — ^Tb.

' See his portraits, and in particular his bust

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARK 67

istence, he was able to settle down amidst them with a
calm and melancholic smile, listening, for the sake of
relaxation, to the aerial music of the fancies in which he
reveUed.^ I am willing to believe, lastly, that in frame
as in other things, he belonged to his great generation
and his great age; that with him, as with Babelais,
Titian, Michel Angelo, and Rubens, the solidity of the
muscles was a coimterpoise to the sensibility of the
nerves ; that in those days the human machine, more
severely tried and more firmly constructed, could with-
stand the storms of passion and the fire of inspiration ;
that soul and body were still at equilibrium ; that genius
was then a blossom, and not, as now, a disease. We
can but make conjectures about all this : if we would
become acquainted more closely with the man, we
must seek him in his works.

IL

Let us then look for the man, and in his style. The
style explains the work ; whilst showing the principal
features of the genius, it infers the rest. When we
have once grasped the dominant faculty, we see the
whole artist developed like a flower.

Shakspeare imagines with copiousness and excess;
he scatters metaphors profusely over all he writes ; every
instant abstract ideas are changed into images ; it is a
series of paintings which is unfolded in his mind. He
does not seek them, they come of themselves; they
crowd within him, covering his arguments ; they dim
with their brightness the pure light of logic. He does
not labour to explain or prove ; picture on picture, image
on image, he is for ever copying the strange and splendid

^ Especially in his later plays : Tempest, Twelfth NighL

68 THE RENAISSANCE. book jl

visions which are engendered one after another^ and are
heaped up within him. Compare to our dull writers
this passage, which I take at hazard from a tranquil
dialogue:

" The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind.
To keep itself from noyance ; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of nuuiy. The cease of nugesty
Dies not alone ; but, hke a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it : it is a massy wheel,
Fix*d on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and aciyoin'd ; which, when it fidls,
Each small annezment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan." ^

Here we have three successive images to express the
same thought. It is a whole blossoming; a bough
grows from the trunk, from that another, which is
multiplied into numerous fresh branches. Instead of a
smooth road, traced by a regular line of dry and
cimningly-fixed landmarks, you enter a wood, crowded
with interwoven trees and luxuriant bushes, which con-
ceal and prevent your progress, which delight and dazzle
your eyes by the magnificence of their verdure and the
wealth of their bloom. You are astonished at first,
modem mind that you are, business man, used to the
clear dissertations of classical poetry ; you become cross ;
you think the author is amusing himself, and that
through conceit and bad taste he is misleading you and
himself in his garden thickets. By no means ; if he

^ Hamlet^ iii. 8.

CHAP. lY. SHAKSPEARE. 69

speaks thus, it is not from choice, but of necessity;
metaphor is not his whim, but the form of his thought.
I21 the height of passion, he imagines still. When
Hamlet, in despair, remembers his fathei^s noble form,
he sees the mythological pictures with which the taste
of the age filled the very streets :

" A station like the herald Mercuiy
New Ughted on a heaven-kiflsing hill.** ^

This charming vision, in the midst of a bloody invective
proves that there lurks a painter underneath the poet
Involuntarily and out of season, he tears off the tragic
mask which covered his face ; and the reader discovers,
behind the contracted features of this terrible mask, a
graceful and inspired smile which he did not expect
to see.

Such an imagination must needs be vehement. Every
metaphor is a convulsion. Whosoever involuntarily
and naturally transforms a dry idea into an image, has
his brain on fire ; true metaphors are flaming apparitions,
which are like a picture in a flash of lightning. Never,
I think, in any nation of Europe, or in any age of
history, has so grand a passion been seen. Shakspeare's
style is a compound of frenzied expressions. No man
has submitted words to such a contortion. Mingled
contrasts, tremendous exaggerations, apostrophes, excla-
mations the whole fury of the ode, confusion of ideas,
accumulation of images, the horrible and the divine,
jumbled into the same line ; it seems to my fancy as
though he never writes a word without shouting it.
'What have I done?' the queen asks Hamlet, He
answers :

^ Act iii Sc 4.

70 THE RENAISSANCE. book u.

** Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls Tirtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vowB
As false as dicers' oaths : 0, such a deed
As from the body of contraction plucks
The very soul, and sweet religion makes
A rhapsody of words : Heaven's hce doth glow ;
Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
With tristful visage, as against the doom.
Is thought-sick at the act." ^

It is the style of phrensy. Yet I have not given alL
The metaphors are all exaggerated, the ideas all veige
on the absurd. All is transformed and disfigured by
the whirlwind of passion. The contagion of the ciiine»
which he denounces, has marred all nature. He no
longer sees anything in the world but corruption
and lying. To vilify the virtuous were little; he
vilifies virtue herseK. Inanimate things are sacked
into this whirlpool of grief. The sky's red tint at
sunset, the pallid darkness spread by night over the
landscape, become the blush and the pallor of shame,
and the wretched man who speaks and weeps sees the
whole world totter with him in the dimness of despair.
Hamlet, it will be said, is half-mad ; this explains
the vehemence of his expressions. The truth is that
Hamlet, here, is Shakspeare. Be the situation terrible
or peaceful, whether he is engaged on an invective or
a conversation, the style is excessive throughout.
Shakspeare never sees things tranquilly. All the
powers of his mind are concentrated in the present

^ Act iii Sc. 4.

CHAP. lY. SHAKSPEARR 71

image or idea. He is buried and absorbed in it
With such a genius, we are on the brink of an abyss ;
the eddying water dashes in headlong, swallowing up
whatever objects it meets, and only bringing them to
light transformed and mutilated. We pause stupefied
before these convulsive metaphors, which might have
been written by a fevered hand in a night's delirium,
which gather a pageful of ideas and pictures in half a
sentence, which scorch the eyes they would enlighten.
Words lose their meaning ; constructions are put out of
joint ; paradoxes of style, apparently false expressions,
which a man might occasionally venture upon with
diffidence in the transport of his rapture, become the
ordinary language. Shakspeare dazzles, repels, terrifies,
disgusts, oppresses ; his verses are a piercing and sub-
lime song, pitched in too high a key, above the reach
of our organs, which offends our ears, of which our
mind alone can divine the justice and beauty.

Yet this is little ; for that singular force of concen-
tration is redoubled by the suddenness of the dash
which calls it into existence. In Shakspeare there is
no preparation, no adaptation, no development, no care
to make himself understood. Like a too fiery and
powerful horse, he bounds, but cannot run. He bridges
in a couple of words an enormous interval ; is at the
two poles in a single instant The reader vainly looks
for the intermediate track; dazed by these prodigi-
ous leaps, he wonders by what miracle the poet has
entered upon a new idea the very moment when he
quitted the last, seeing perhaps between the two images
a long scale of transitions, which we mount with
difficulty step by step, but which he has spanned in a
strida Shakspeare flies, we creep. Hence comes a

72 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

stylo made up of conceits, bold images shattered in an
instant by others still bolder, barely indicated ideas
completed by others far removed, no visible connection,
but a visible incoherence ; at every step we halt, the
track failing ; and there, far above us, lo, stands the
poet, and we find that we have ventured in his foot-
steps, through a craggy land, full of precipices, which
he* threads, as if it were a straightforward road, but on
which our greatest efforts barely carry us along.

What will you think, further, if we observe that
these vehement expressions, so natural in their up-
welling, instead of following one after the other, slowly
and with effort, are hurled out by hundreds, with an
impetuous ease and abundance, like the bubbUng waves
from a welling spring, which are heaped together, rise
one above another, and find nowhere room enough to
spread and exhaust themselves ? You may find in
Jiovieo and Juliet a score of examples of this inexhaus-
tible inspiration. The two lovers pile up an infinite
mass of metaphors, impassioned exaggerations, clenches
contorted phrases, amorous extravagances. Their lan-
guage is like the trill of nightingales. Shakspeare's
wits, Mercutio, Beatrice, Rosalind, his clowns, buffoons,
sparkle with far-fetched jokes, which rattle out like a
volley of musketry. There is none of tliem but provides
enough play on words to stock a whole theatre, Leai^s
curses, or Queen Margaret's, would suffice for all the
madmen in an asylum, or all the oppressed of the earth.
The sonnets are a delirium of ideas and images, laboured
at with an obstinacy enough to make a man giddy.
His first poem, Vemis mid Adonis, is the sensual
ecstasy of a Correggio, insatiable and excited. This
exuberant fecundity intensifies qualities already in

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARK 73

excess, and multiplies a hundred-fold the luxuriance of
metaphor, the incoherence of style, and the unbridled
vehemence of expression.^

AU that I have said may be compressed into a few
woids. Objects were taken into his mind organised
and complete ; they pass into ours disjointed, decom-
posed, fragmentarily. He thought in the lump, we
think piecemeal; hence his style and our style — ^two
languages not to be reconciled. We, for our part,
writers and reasoners, can note precisely by a word
each isolated fraction of an idea, and represent the due
order of its parts by the due order of our expressions.
We advance gradually ; we foUow the filiations, refer
continually to the roots, try and treat our woids as
numbers, our sentences as equations ; we employ but
general terms, which every mind can understand, and
r^ular constructions, into which any mind can enter ;
we attain justness and clearness, not life. Shakspeare
lets justness and clearness look out for themselves, and
attains life. From amidst his complex conception and
his coloured semi-vision he grasps a fragment, a
quivering fibre, and shows it ; it is for you, from this
fragment, to divine the rest. He, behind the word,
has a whole picture, an attitude, a long argument
abridged, a mass of swarming ideas ; you know them,
these abbreviative, condensive words: these are they
which we launch out amidst the fire of invention, in a
fit of passion — woids of slang or of fashion, which
appeal to local memory or individual experience ; ^

^ This is why, in tl^e eyes of a writer of the seyenteenth century,
Shakspeare's style is the most obscure, pretentious, painful, barbarous,
and absurd, that could be imagined.

' Shakspeare's yocabulary is the most copious of alL It comprises
abofQt 16,000 words ; Milton's only 8000.

74 THE RENAISSANCR book n.

little desultory and incorrect phrases, which, by their
irregularity, express the suddenness and the breaks of
the inner sensation ; trivial words, exaggerated figures.^
There is a gesture beneath each, a quick contraction of
the brows, a curl of laughing lips, a clown's trick, an
unhinging of the whole machine. None of them mark
ideas, aU suggest images ; each is the extremity and iome
of a complete mimic action ; none is the expression and
definition of a partial and limited idea. This is why
Shakspeare is strange and powerful, obscure and crea-
tive, beyond all the poets of his or any other age ; the
most immoderate of all violators of language, the most
marvellous of all creators of souls, the farthest removed
from regular logic and classical reason, the one most
capable of exciting in us a world of forms and of plac-
ing living beings before us.

III.

Let us reconstruct this world, so as to find in it the
imprint of its creator. A poet does not copy at random
the manners which surround him ; he selects from this
vast material, and involuntarily brings upon the stage
the habits of the heart and conduct which best suit Ms
talent. If he is a logician, a moralist, an orator, as, for
instance, one of the French great tragic poets (Bacine)
of the seventeenth century, he will only represent noble
manners ; he will avoid low characters ; he will have
a horror of menials and the plebs ; he will observe the
greatest decorum amidst the strongest outbreaks of
passion ; he will reject as scandalous every low or inde-

^ See the conversation of Laertes and his sister, and of Laertes and
Polonius, in Ilamltt. The style is foreign to the situation ; and we see
here plainly the natural and necessary process of Shakspeare's thought

CHAB. lY. SHAESPEAKE. 75

cent word ; he will give us reason, loftiness, good taste
throughout ; he will suppress the familiarity, childish-
ness, artlessness, gay banter of domestic life ; he will
Uot out precise details, special traits, and will carry
tragedy into a serene and sublime ]»gion, where his
abstract personages, unencumbered by time and space,
after an exchange of eloquent harangues and able
dissertations, will kill each other becomingly, and as
though they were merely concluding a ceremony.
Shakspeare does just the contrary, because his genius
is the exact opposite. His master faculty is an impas-
sioned imagination, freed from the shackles of reason
and morality. He abandons himself to it, and finds in
man nothing that he would care to lop off. He accepts
nature and finds it beautiful in its entirety. He paints
it in its littlenesses, its deformities, its weaknesses, its
excesses, its irregularities, and in its rages ; he exhibits
man at his meals, in bed, at play, drunk, mad, sick ; he
adds that which ought not to be seen to that which
passes on the stage. He does not dream of ennobling,
but of copying human life, and aspires only to make his
copy more energetic and more striking than the original
Hence the morals of this drama ; and first, the want
of dignity. Dignity arises firom self-command A
man selects the most noble of his acts and attitudes, and
allows himself no other. Shakspeare's characters select
none, but allow themselves all. His kings are men, and
fiithers of families. The terrible Leontes who is about
to order the death of his wife and his friend, plays like
a child with his son : caresses him, gives him all the
pretty pet names which mothers are wont to employ ;
he dares be trivial; he gabbles like a nurse; he has
her language and fulfils her duties :

76 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

" Leontet. What, hast smutch'd thy noBe f
They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, cq>tain,
We must be neat ; not neat, but cleanly, captain : . . .
Come, sir page,

Look on me with your welkin eye : sweet villain !
Most dearest ! my collop . . . Looking on the lines
Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil
Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd,
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled,
Lest it should bite its master. . . .
How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman ! . . . My brother,
Are you so fond of your young prince as we
Do seem to be of ours f

Polixenes, If at home, sir,

He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter.
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy.
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all :
He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood." ^

There are a score of such passages in Shakspeare.
The great passions, with him as in nature, are preceded
or followed by trivial actions, small-talk, commonplace
sentiments. Strong emotions are accidents in our life :
to drink, to eat, to talk of indifferent things, to carry out
mechanically an habitual duty, to dream of some stale
pleasure or some ordinary annoyance, that is in which we
employ all our time. Shakspeare paints us as we are ;
his heroes bow, ask people for news, speak of rain and
fine weather, as often and as casually as ourselves,
on the very eve of falling into the extremity of misery,
or of plunging into fatal resolutions. Hamlet asks

^ fFinUr*8 Tale, I 2.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 77

whatf s o'clock, finds the wind biting, talks of feasts and
music heard without; and this quiet talk, so uncon-
nected with the action, so full of slight, insignificant
facts, which chance alone has raised up and guided,
lasts until the moment when his father's ghost, rising
in the darkness, reveals the assassination which it is
his duty to avenga

Season teUs us that our manners should be mea-
sured ; this is why the manners which Shakspeare
paints are not so. Pure nature is violent, passionate :
it admits no excuses, suffers no middle course, takes no
count of circumstances, wills blindly, breaks out into
railing, has the irrationality, ardour, anger of children.
Shakspeare's characters have hot blood and a ready
hand They cannot restrain themselves, they abandon
themselves at once to their grief, indignation, love, and
plunge desperately down the steep slope, where their
passion urges them. How many need I quote ? Timon,
Posthumus, Cressida, all the young girls, all the chief
characters in the great dramas ; everywhere Shakspeare
paints the unreflecting impetuosity of the impulse of the
moment Gapulet teUs his daughter Juliet that in three
days she is to marry Earl Paris, and bids her be proud
of it ; she answers that she is not proud of it, and yet
she thanks the earl for this proof of love. Compare
Capulef s fury with the anger of Orgon,^ and you may
measure the difference of the two poets and the two
civilisations :

" Chpulet, How now, how now, chop-logic ! What is this f
' Proud,' and ' I thank you,' and ' I thank you not ; '
And yet ' not proud/ mistress minion, you,
Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,

^ One of Moli^*s characters in Tctriuffe, — Ta.

78 THE RENAISSANCR book n.

Bat fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thnnday next.

To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church,

Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.

Out, you green-sickness carrion 1 out, you baggage !

You tallow-face !

Juliet. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

C, Hang thee, young baggage ! disobedient wretch !
I tell thee what : get thee to church o' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face :
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me ;
My fingers itch. . . .

Lady C, You are too hot

C, God's bread 1 it makes me mad :
Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play.
Alone, in company, still my care hath been
To have her match'd : and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,
Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
Stufi^d, as they say, with honourable parts,
Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man ;
And then to have a wretched piding fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender.
To answer, * Til not wed ; I cannot love,
I am too young ; I pray you, pardon ww," —
But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you :
Graze where you will, you shall not house with me :
Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.
Thursday is near ; lay hand on heart, advise :
An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend ;
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets.
For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee." ^

This method of exhorting one's child to marry is
peculiar to Shakspeare and the sixteenth century.

^ Borneo and Juliet, iii 5.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 79

Contradiction to these men was like a red rag to a
bull ; it drove them mad.

We might be sure that in this age, and on this stage,
decency was a thing unknown. It is wearisome, being
a check ; men got rid of it, because it was wearisome.
It is a gift of reason and morality; as indecency is
produced by nature and passion. Shakspeare's words
are too indecent to be translated. His characters call
things by their dirty names, and compel the thoughts
to particular images of physical love. The talk of
gentlemen and ladies is fall of coarse allusions; we
should have to find out an alehouse of the lowest
description to hear like words nowadays.^

It would be in an alehouse too that we should have
to look for the rude jests and hmtel kind of wit which
form the staple of these conversations. Kindly polite-
ness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a
sort of hmnanity and kindliness applied to small acts
and everyday discourse; it bids man soften towards
others, and forget himself for the sake of others; it
constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.
This is why it is absent from the manners of the drama
we are considering. You will see carmen, out of
sportiveness and good hmnour, deal one another hard
blows ; so it is pretty well with the conversation of the
lords and ladies of Shakspeare who are in a sportive
mood ; for instance, Beatrice and Benedick, very weU
bred folk as things go,^ with a great reputation for wit
and politeness, whose smart retorts create amusement

^ ffenry Fill, ii 8, and many other scenes.

' Much Ado db(nU Nothing, See also the manner in which Henry
y. in Shakspeare's King Henry V. pays court to Katharine of France
(T. 2).

80 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

for the bystanders. These " skirmishes of wit** consist
in telling one another plainly: You are a coward, a
glutton, an idiot, a buffoon, a rake, a brute ! You are
a parrot's tongue, a fool, a . . . (the word is there).
Benedick says :

" I will go ... to the Antipodes . . . rather than hold three
words' conference with this harpy. ... I cannot endore
my Lady Tongue. . . .
Don Pedro, You have put him down, lady, you have pot

him down.
Beatrice, So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I
should prove the mother of fools." ^

We can infer the tone they use when in anger. F^milia^
in Othello, says :

'' He caird her whore ; a beggar in his drink
Coidd not have laid such terms upon his callat.'*^

They have a vocabulary of foul words as complete as
that of Eabelais, and they exhaust it They catch up
handfuls of mud, and hurl it at their enemy, not con-
ceiving themselves to be smirched.

Their actions correspond. They go without shame
or pity to the limits of their passion. They kill^ poison,
violate, bum ; the stage is full of abominations.
Shakspeare lugs upon the stage all the atrocious deeds
of the civil wars. These are the ways of wolves and
hyaenas. "We must read of Jack Cade's sedition* to
gain an idea of this madness and fury. We might
imagine we were seeing infuriated beasts, the murderous
recklessness of a wolf in a sheepfold, the brutality of
a hog fouling and rolling himself in filth and blood.

^ Much Ado abotU Nothing, iL 1. ' Act iv. 2.

' Second Part of Henry VI, iv. 6.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARR 81

They destroy, kffl, butcher each other ; with their feet
in the blood of their victims, they call for food and
drink ; they stick heads on pikes and make them kiss
one another, and they laugh.

"Jack Cade. There shall be in England eeven halfpenny
loaves sold for a penny. . ,,. There shall be no money ; aJl shall
eat and drink on my score, and I will appaiel them all in one
lively, ... And here sitting upon London-stone, I charge and
command that, of the city's cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing
but claret vine this Gist year of otir reign. . . . Away, burn all
the records of the realm : my mouth shall be the parliament of
England.' . . . And henceforth all things shall be in common.
. . . What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of
Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecn, the dauphin of France t
. . . The proudest peer in the realm ahaU not wear a head on
his shoulders, unless he pay me tribute ; there shall not a maid
be married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they
have it. (lU-enttr tAcU leith tkt Keadt of Lord Say and bii xm-
iK-Iow.) But is not this braver 1 Let them Mss one another,
ibr they loved well when they were alive." '

Man must not be let loose ; we know not what lusts
and rage may brood under a sober guise. Nature was
never BO hideous, and this hideousness is the tnith.

Are these cannibal manners only met with among
the scum ? Why, the princes are worse. The Duke
of Cornwall orders the old Earl of Gloucester to be tied
to a chair, because, owing to him King Lear has escaped :

" Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot

(OtoucetUr it held doum in the chair, vihiU GomvxtU ptuckt
mU one of hi* eyee, aiid ul* hit foot on it.)

I Smry VI. 2d put, iv. 2, 6, 7.

82 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Gloster, He that will think to live till he be old,
Give me some help ! cruel : you gods !

Regan, One side will mock another ; the other too.

Cornwall If you see vengeance, —

Servant Hold your hand, my lord :

I have served you ever since I was a child ;
But better service have I never done you,
Than now to bid you hold.

Regan, How now, you dog !

Serv, If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean 1

Com, My villain ! Draws and runs at him,)

tServ, Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.

(Draws ; they fight ; Cornwall is wounded.)

Regan, Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus.

(Snatches a sword ^ comes beJiindf and stabs him,)

Serv, 0, I am slain ! My lord, you have one eye left
To see some mischief on him. ! ' (Diet.)

Com, Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly 1
Where is thy lustre now ]

Gloster, All dark and comfortless. Where's my son 1 . . .

Regan, Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell
His way to Dover." ^

Such are the manners of that stage. They are un-
bridled, like those of the age, and like the poet's imagi-
nation. To copy the common actions of every-day life,
the puerilities and feeblenesses to which the greatest
continually sink, the outbui-sts of passion wliich d^rade
them, the indecent, hai"sh, or foul words, the atrocious
deeds in which licence revels, the brutality and ferocity
of primitive nature, is the work of a free and unen-
cimibered imagination. To copy this hideousness and
these excesses with a selection of such familiar, signi-

^ King Lear, iii. 7.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 83

ficant, precise details, that they reveal under every
word of every personage a complete civilisation, is the
work of a concentrated and all-powerful imagination.
This species of manners and this energy of description
indicate the same faculty, unique and excessive, which
the style had already indicated.

IV.

On this common background stands out in striking
relief a population of distinct living figures, illuminated
by an intense light. This creative power is Shakspeare's
great gift, and it communicates an extraordinary signifi-
cance to his words. Every phrase pronounced by one
of his characters enables us to see, besides the idea
which it contains and the emotion which prompted it,
the aggregate of the qualities and the entire character
which produced it — the mood, physical attitude, bearing,
look of the man, all instantaneously, with a clearness
and force approached by no one. The words which
strike our ears are not the thousandth part of those we
hear within ; they are like sparks thrown off here and
there ; the eyes catch rare flashes of flame ; the mind
alone perceives the vast conflagration of which they are
the signs and the effect. He gives us two dramas in
one: the first strange, convulsive, curtailed, visible;
the other consistent, immense, invisible ; the one covers
the other so well, that as a rule we do not realise that
we are perusing words : we hear the roU of those terrible
voices, we see contracted features, glowing eyes, paUid
faces ; we see the agitation, the fuiious resolutions which
mount to the brain with the feverish blood, and descend
to the sharp-strung nerves. This property possessed
by every phrase to exhibit a world of sentiments and

84 TEE RENAISSANCE. book il

forms, comes from the fact that the phrase is actually
caused by a world of emotions and images. Shakspeaie,
when he wrote, felt all that we feel, and much besides.
He had the prodigious faculty of seeing in a twinkling
of the eye a complete character, body, mind, past and
present, in every detail and every depth of his being,
with the exact attitude and the expression of face, which
the situation demanded. A word here and there of
Hamlet or Othello would need for its explanation three
pages of commentaries; each of the half-understood
thoughts, which the commentator may have discovered,
has left its trace in the turn of the phrase, in the nature
of the metaphor, in the order of the words ; nowadays^
in pursuing these traces, we divine the thoughts. These
innumerable traces have been impressed in a second,
within the compass of a lina In the next line there
are as many, impressed just as quickly, and in the same
compass. You can gauge the concentration and the
velocity of the imagination which creates thus.

These characters are all of the same family. Good
or bad, gross or delicate, witty or stupid, Shakspeare
gives them all the same kind of spirit which is his own.
He has made of them imaginative people, void of will and
reason, impassioned machines, vehemently jostled one
against another, who were outwardly whatever is most
natural and most abandoned in human nature. Let us
act the play to ourselves, and see in all its stages this
clanship of figures, this prominence of portraits.

Lowest of all are the stupid folk, babbling or brutish.
Imagination already exists there, where reason is not
yet bom ; it exists also there where reason is dead.
The idiot and the brute blindly foUow the phantoms
which exist in their benumbed or mechanical brains.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEAKE. 85

No poet has understood this mechanism like Shak-
speare. His Caliban, for instance, a deformed savage,
fed on roots, growls like a beast under the hand of
Prospero, who has subdued him. He howls continually
against his master, though he knows that every curse
will be paid back with *' cramps and aches." He is a
chained wolf, trembling and fierce, who tries to bite
when approached, and who crouches when he sees
the lash raised. He has a foul sensuality, a loud
base laugh, the gluttony of degraded humanity. He
wished to violate Miranda in her sleep. He cries
for his food, and gorges himself when he gets it. A
sailor who had landed in the island, Stephano, gives
him wine ; he kisses his feet, and takes him for a god ;
he asks if he has not dropped from heaven, and adores
him. We find in him rebellious and baffled passions,
which are eager to rise again and to be satiated. Ste-
phano had beaten his comrade. Caliban cries, "Beat
him enough : after a little time I'U beat him too. "
He prays Stephano to come with him and murder
Prospero in his sleep ; he thirsts to lead him there,
dances through joy and sees his master already with his
'* weasand" cut, and his brains scattered on the earth :

" Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st thou here,
This is the mouth o' the cell : no noise, and enter.
Do that good mischief which may make this island
Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,
For aye thy foot-licker." ^

Others, like Ajax and Cloten, are more like men, and
yet it is pure mood that Shakspeare depicts in them,
as in Caliban. The clogging corporeal machine, the

^ The Tempest, iv. 1.

86 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

mass of muscles, the thick blood sluggishly moving
along in the veins of these fighting men, oppress the
intelligence, and leave no life but for animal passions.
Ajax uses his fists, and devours meat ; that is his exist-
ence ; if he is jealous of Achilles, it is pretty much as
a bull is jealous of his fellow. He permits himself to
be restrained and led by Ulysses, without looking before
him : the grossest flattery decoys him. The Greeks
have urged him to accept Hector^s challenge. Behold
him puffed up with pride, scorning to answer anyone^ not
knowing what he says or does. Thersites cries, "Good-
morrow, Ajax ;" and he replies, "Thanks, Agamemnon."
He has no further thought than to contemplate bis
enormous frame, and roll majestically his big stupid
eyes. When the day of the fight has come, he strikes
at Hector as on an anvil. After a good while they are
separated. " I am not warm yet," says Ajax, " let us
fight again." ^ Cloten is less massive than this phleg-
matic ox ; but he is just as idiotic, just as vainglorious,
just as coarse. Tlie beautiful Imogen, urged by his
insults and his scullion manners, tells him that his
whole body is not wortli as much as Posthumus' mean-
est garment. He is stung to the quick, repeats the
word several times ; he cannot shake ofif the idea, and
runs at it again and again witli his head down, like
an angry ram :

" Cloten. * His garment 1 * Now, the devil —

Imogen, To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently —

C. * His garment T . . . You have abused me : ' His meanest

garment !' ... Til be revenged : ' His meanest garment I '

Well" 2

^ See Troilua and Cressida, ii 8, the jesting manner in which the
generals drive on this fierce hrute. ' Cymheline^ ii 8.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 87

He gets some of Posthumiis* garments, and goes to
Milford Haven, expecting to meet Imogen there. On
his way he mutters thus :

" With that suit upon my back, will I ravish her : first kill
him, and in her eyes 3 there shall she see my valour, which will
then be a torment to her contempt. He on the ground, my
speech of insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust
has dined, — which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the
clothes that she so praised, — to the court I'll knock her back,
foot her home again.'' ^

Others again, are but babblers : for example, Polonius,
the grave brainless counsellor ; a great baby, not yet
out of his " swathing clouts ; " a solemn booby, who
rains on men a shower of counsels, compliments, and
maxims ; a sort of court speaking-trimipet, useful in
grand ceremonies, with the air of a thinker, but fit only
to spout words. But the most complete of all these
characters is that of the nurse in Eomeo and Juliet, a
gossip, loose in her talk, a regular kitchen oracle, smell-
ing of the stew-pan and old boots, foolish, impudent,
immoral, but otherwise a good creature, and afTectionate
to her nurse-child. Mark this disjointed and never-
ending gossip's babble :

" NuTM. 'Faith I can tell her age unto an hour.

Lady Capulet, She's not fourteen. . . .

Nurse. Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
Susan and she — Grod rest all Christian souls ! —
Were of an age : well, Susan is with God ;
She was too good for me : but, as I said,
On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen ;
That shall she, marry ; I remember it well.

^ Cymbeline, iii. 5.

88 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

'Tia Bince the earthquake now eleyen yean ;

And she was wean'd, — I never shall forget it, —

Of all the days of the year, upon that day :

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun imder the dove-house wall ;

My lord and you were then at Mantua : —

Nay, I do bear a brain : — but, as I said.

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool.

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug !

Shake, quoth the dove-house : 'twas no need, I trow.

To bid me trudge :

And since that time it is eleven years ;

For then she could stand alone ; nay, by the rood.

She could have run and waddled all about ;

For even the day before, she broke her brow." ^

Then she tells an indecent anecdote, which she b^ins
over again four times. She is silenced : what then ?
She hits her anecdote in her head, and cannot cease
repeating it and laughing to herself. Endless repeti-
tions are the mind's first step. The vulgar do not
pursue the straight line of reasoning and of the story ;
they repeat their steps, as it were merely marking time :
struck with an image, they keep it for an hour before
their eyes, and are never tired of it. If they do ad-
vance, they turn aside to a hundred subordinate ideas
before they get at the phnise retj^uired. They allow
themselves to be diverted by all the thoughts which
come across them. This is what the nurse does ; and
when she brings Juliet news of her lover, she torments
and wearies her, less from a w^ish to tease than from a
habit of wandering from the point :

^ Eomeo and Juliet, i. 3.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEAKE. 89

'' Nurse, Jesu, what haste ? can you not stay awhile ?
Do you not see that I am out of breath ?

Juliet. How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath
To say to me that thou art out of breath 1
Is thy news good, or bad ? answer to that ;
Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance :
Let me be satisfied : ia't good or bad ?

N. Well, you have made a simple choice ; you know not how
to choose a man : Romeo I no, not he : though his face be better
than any man's, yet his 1^ excels all men's ; and for a hand and
a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet they
are past compare : he is not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll
warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Oo thy ways, wench ; serve
God. What, have you dined at home ?

/. No, no : but all this did I know before.
What says he of our marriage ^ what of that ?

N, Lord, how my head aches ! what a head haVe I !
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
My back o' t'other side, — 0, my back, my back !
Beshrew your heart for sending me about.
To catch my death with jaunting up and down !

/. I' faith, I am sony that thou art not welL
Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love ?

N, Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous,
and a kind, and a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous, —
Where is your mother ? " ^

It is never-ending. Her gabble is worse when she
comes to announce to Juliet the death of her cousin
and the banishment of Bomeo. It is the shrill cry
and chatter of an overgrown asthmatic magpie. She
laments, confuses the names, spins roundabout sentences,
ends by asking for aqua-mtce. She curses Eomeo, then
brings him to Juliet's chamber. Kext day Juliet is

^ Borneo and Juliet, ii 5.

90 THE RENAISSANCE. book a

ordered to marry Earl Paris ; Juliet throws herself into
her nurse's anns, praying for comfort, advice, assistance.
The other finds the true remedy : Marry Paris^

" 0, he's a lovely gentleman !
Romeo's a dishclout to him : an eagle, madam^
Hath not so green, so quick, so &ir an eye
As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first." ^

This cool immorality, these weather-cock arguments,
tliis fashion of estimating love like a fishwoman,
completes the portrait.

V.

The mechanical imagination produces Shakspeare's
fool-characters : a quick venturesome dazzling, unquiet
imagination, produces his men of wit Of wit there
are many kinds. One, altogether French, which is but
reason, a foe to paradox, scomer of foUy, a sort of in-
cisive common sense, having no occupation but to
render truth amusing and evident, the most effective
weapon with an intelligent and vain people : such was
the wit of Voltaire and the drawing-rooms. The other,
that of improvisatores and artists, is a mere inventive
rapture, paradoxical, imshackled, exuberant, a sort of
self-entertainment, a phantasmagoria of images, flashes
of wit, strange ideas, dazing and intoxicating, like the
movement and illumination in a ball-room. Such is
the wit of Mercutio, of the clowns, of Beatrice, Rosalind,
and Benedick. They laugh, not from a sense of the
ridiculous, but from the desire to laugh. You must

^ Romeo and Juliet^ iii. 5.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEABE. 91

look elsewhere for the campaigns which a^ressive
Teason makes against human folly. Here folly is in ita
full bloom. Our folk think of amusement, and nothing
more. They are good-humoured ; they let their wit
prance gaily over the possible and the impossibla They
play upon words, contort their sense, draw absurd and
laughable inferences, send them back to one another, and
vithout intennission, as if with shuttlecocks, and vie
with each other in singularity and invention. They
dress all their ideas in strange or sparkling metaphors.
The taste of the time was for masquerades ; their
conversation is a masquerade of ideas. They say
nothing in a simple style ; they only seek to heap to-
gether subtle things, far-fetched, difficidt to invent and
to understand; all their expressions are over-refined,
onexpected, extraordinary; they strain their thought,
and change it into a caricature. " Alas, poor Romeo ! "
says Mercutio, " he is already dead ; stabbed with a
white wench's black eye ; shot through the ear with a
Vjve-song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind
bow-boy's butt-shaft."' Benedick relates a conversation
he has just held with his mistress : " O, she misused
me past the endurance of a block ! an oak, but with
one green leaf on it would have answered her; my
very visor began to assume life, and scold with her." ^
These gay and perpetual extravagances show the bearing
of the speakers. They do not remain quietly seated in
their chairs, like the Marquesses in the Misanthrope ;
they whirl roimd, leap, paint their faces, gesticulate
boldly their ideas ; their wit-rockets end with a song.
Young folk, soldiers and artists, they let off their fire-
works of phrases, and gambol round about. " There
* Btmeo a»d Julitt, IL 1. * JfucA Ada about Sotking, iL I.

92 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

was a star danced, and under that was I bom." ^ This
expression of Beatrice's aptly describes the kind of
poetical, sparkling, unreasoning, channing wit, more
akin to music than to literature, a sort of dream,
which is spoken out aloud, and wliilst wide awake, not
unlike that described by Mercutio :

** 0, th>BD, I see Queen Mab bath been with you.
She ia the fairies' midwife ; and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep ;
Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd ftx>m the lazy finger of a maid ;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut.
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love ;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. . . .
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose.
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit ;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep.
Then dreams he of another benefice :

' Much ado About Nothing, il 1.

CHAP, IT, SHAKSPEABE. 93

SometimB she diiretli o'er a soldier'a neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths fire-fothom deep ; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts aud wakes.
And being thua irighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manea of horses in the night.
And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled much misfortune bodes. . . .
This is she " ^ . . .

Borneo intemipta him, or he would never end. Let
the reader compare unth the dialogue of the French
theatre thia little poem,

" Child of an idle brain,
B^ot of nothing but vain fantasy," *

introduced without incongruity in the midst of a con-
Tetsatiou of the sixteenth century, and he will
understand the difference between the wit which
devotes itself to reasoning, or to record a subject for
laughter, and that imagination which is self-amused
with its own act

FftlBtftfT has the passions of an animal, and the
imagination of a man of wit. There is no character
which better exemplifies the fire and immorality of
Sbakspeare. Falstaff is a great supporter of disrepu-
table places, swearer, gamester, idler, wine-bibber, as
low as he well can be. He has a big beUy, bloodshot eyes,
bloated face, shaking legs ; he spends his life with his
elbows among the tavern-jugs, or asleep on the ground be-
hind Uie arras; he only wakes to cuise, lie, brag, and steal
' Somto (uid Jviia, L 4 * Hiid.

94 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

He is as big a swindler as Panurge, who had sixty-three
ways of making money, " of which the honestest was
by sly theft." And what is worse, he is an old man,
a knight, a courtier, and well educated. Must he not
be odious and repulsive? By no means; we cannot
help liking him. At bottom, like his brother Panurge^
he is '' the best fellow in the world." He has no malice
in his composition ; no other wish than to laugh and be
amused. When insulted, he bawls out louder than his
attackers, and pays tliem back with interest in coarse
words and insults ; but he owes them no grudge for it
The next minute he is sitting down with them in a
low tavern, drinking their health like a brother and
comrade. If he has vices, he exposes them so frankly
that we are obliged to forgive him them. He seems
to say to us "Well, so I am, what then? I like
drinking: isn't the wine good? I take to my heels
when hard hitting begins; don't blows hurt? I get
into debt, and do fools out of their money ; isn't it nice
to have money in your pocket? I brag; isn't it
natural to want to be well thought of?" — "Dost thou
hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of innocency,
Adam fell ; and wliat should poor Jack Falstafif do in
the days of vUlany ? Thou seest I have more flesh than
another man, and tlierefore more frailty." ^ Falstaff is
so frankly immoral, that ho ceases to be so. Conscience
ends at a certain point ; nature assumes its place, and
man rushes upon what he desires, without more thought
of being just or unjust than an annual in the neigh-
bouring wood. Falstaff, engaged in recruiting, has sold
exemptions to all the rich people, and only enrolled
starved and half-naked wTetches. There's but a shirt

^ First Part of King Henry IF,, iii. 8.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 95

and a half in all his company : that does not trouble
him. Bah : " theyTl find linen enough on every hei^e."
The prince, who has seen them, says, " I did never see
such pitiful rascals." "Tut, tut," answers Falstaff,
"good enough to toss; food for powder; they'll fill a
pit as well as better; tush, man, mortal men, mortal
men." * His second excuse is his unfailing spirit If
ever there was a man who could jabber, it is he. Insults
and oaths, curses, jobations, protests, flow from him as
&om an open barrel. He is never at a loss ; he devises
a shift for every difficulty. Lies sprout out of him,
fructify, increase, beget one another, like mushrooms
on a rich and rotten bed of earth. He lies still more
from his imagination and nature than from interest
and necessity. It is evident from the manner in which
he strains his fictions. He says he has fought alone
against two men. The next moment it is four. Pre-
sently we have seven, then eleven, then fourteen. He
is stopped in time, or he would soon be talking of a
whole army. When unmasked, he does not lose his
temper, and is the first to laugh at his boastings.
" Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold. . . . What, shall
we be merry? shall we have a play extempore?"*
He does the scolding part of King Henry with so much
truth, that we might take him for a king, or an actor.
This big pot-bellied fellow, a coward, a cjTiic, a brawler,
a drunkard, a lewd rascal, a pothouse poet, is one of
Shakspeare's favourites. The reason is, that his morals
are those of pure nature, and Shakspeare's mind is con-
genial with his own.

• First Part of Jtitjjr Bcnry IV., U. 2. » Ibid, ii *.

96 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

VI.

Xaturo is shameless and gross amidst this mass of
flesh, hea\'y witli wine and fatness. It is delicate in
the delicate body of women, but as unreasoning cmd
impassioned in Desdemona as in Falstaflf. Shakspeare's
women are channing children, who feel in excess and
love passionately. Tliey have unconstrained manners,
little rages, nice wonls of friendship, a coquettish
rebelliousness, a gracefid volubility, which recall the
warbling and the prettiuess of birds. Tlie heroines of
the French stage are almost men ; these are women
and in every sense of the word. More imprudent than
Desdemona a woman could not Ije. She is moved with
pity for Cassio, and asks a favour for him passionately,
recklessly, be the thing just or no, dangerous or no.
She knows nothing of man's laws, and does not tliink of
them. All that she sees is, that Cassio is unhappy : —

** Be thou assured, good Csussio . . . My lord shall never rest ;
I'll watch him, tame and talk him out of patience ;
His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift ;
1*11 intermingle everything he does
With Cassio's suit." ^

She asks her favour :

" Othello, Not now, sweet Desdemona ; some other time.
Desdemona, But shall't be shortly 1
0, The sooner, sweet, for you.
Des, Shairt be to-night at supper 1
0. No, not to-night.
Dcs, To-morrow dinner, then ?
0, 1 shall not dine at home ;
I meet the captains at the citadel.

1 OtMlo, iii 3.

CHAP. rv. SHAKSPEARE. »7

Zta. Why, then, to-morrow night ; or Tuesdqr morn ;
On Tueeday noon, or night ; on Wednesday mom ;
I prithee, name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days : in faith, he's penitent." '

She 13 somewhat astonished to aee herself refused : she
scolds Othello. He yields : who would not yield seeing
a reproach in those lovely stilkiDg eyes ? 0, says she,
with a pretty pout :

" This ia not a boon ;

Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,

Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm.

Or sue to you to do peculiar profit

To your own person." *
A moment after, when he prays her to leave him alone
for a while, mark the innocent gaiety, the ready curtsy,
the playful child's tone :

" Shall I deny you 1 no : farewell, my lord. . , .
Emilia, come : Be aa your fancicB teach you j
Whate'er you be, I am obedient." '

This vivacity, this petulance, does not prevent shrinking
modesty and silent timidity : on the contrary, they
spring from a common cause, extreme sensibility. She
who feels much and quickly has more reserve and more
passion than others.; she breaks out or is silent ; she
says nothing or everything. Such is this Imogen
" So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,
And strokes death to her."*

Such is Vii^a, the sweet wife of Coriolanus; hw
heart is not a Soman one ; she is terrified at her
husband's victories: when Volumnia describes him

> OlMlo, iii. 3. ■ Ibid. ' Ilrid. * Cymbeline, m. G.
VOL. U. H

98 THE HENAISSANCE. book ii.

stamping on the field of battle, and wiping his bloody
brow with his hand, she grows pale :

** His bloody brow ! Jupiter, no blood ! . . .
Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius ! " ^

She wishes to forget all that she knows of these dangers ;
she dare not think of them. When asked if Coriolanus
does not generally return wounded, she cries, " O, no, no,
no." She avoids this cruel picture, and yet nurses a
secret pang at the bottom of her heart She will not
leave the house : " I'll not over the threshold till my
lord return."^ She does not smile, will hardly admit a
visitor ; she would blame herself, as for a lack of tender-
ness, for a moment's forgetfulness or gaiety. When he
does return, she can only blush and weep. This exalted
sensibility must needs end in love. All Shakspeare's
women love Tvithout measure, and nearly all at first
sight. At the first look Juliet casts on Bomeo^ she
says to the nurse :

" Go, ask his name : if he be married,
My grave is like to be my wedding bed." •

It is the revelation of their destiny. As Shakspeare has
made them, they cannot but love, and they must love
till death. But this first look is an ecstasy : and this
sudden approach of love is a transport. Miranda seeing
Fernando, fancies that she sees " a thing divina" She
halts motionless, in the amazement of this sudden vision,
at the sound of these heavenly harmonies which rise
from the depths of her heart. She weeps, on seeing
him drag the heavy logs ; with her slender wliite hands
she woiJd do the work whilst he reposed. Her compas-
sion and tenderness carry her away ; she is no longer

^ Coriolanus, i. 3. ' ^ Ibid, ' Borneo arid Juliet, L 5.

CHAP. lY. SHAESPEAKE. 99

mistress of her words, she says what she would not,
what her father has forbidden her to disclose, what
an instant before she would never have confessed. The
too full heart overflows unwittingly, happy, and ashamed
at the current of joy and new sensations with which an
unknown feeling has flooded her :

'' Mirandci, I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of . . . •
Fernando. Wherefore weep you 1
Af. At mine unworthiness that dare not offer

What I desire to give, and much less take

What I shall die to want. . . .

I am your wife, if you will many me ;

U not, m die your maid." ^

This irresistible invasion of love transforms the whole
character. The shrinking and tender Desdemona, sud-
denly, in full senate, before her father, renounces her
fitther ; dreams not for an instant of asking his pardon,
or consoling him. She wiU leave for Cyprus with
Othello, through the enemy's fleet and the tempest.
Everything vanishes before the one and adored image
which has taken entire and absolute possession of her
whole heart So, extreme evils, bloody resolves, are only
the natural sequence of such love. Ophelia becomes
mad, Juliet commits suicide; no one but looks upon
such madness and death as necessary. You will not
then discover virtue in these souls, for by virtue is im-
plied a determinate desire to do good, and a rational
observance of duty. They are only pure through
delicacy or love. They recoil from vice as a gross thing,
not as an immoral thing. What they feel is not respect
for the marriage vow, but adoration of their husband.

1 The Tempest, iil 1.

100 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

" O sweetest, fairest lily I " So Cymbeline speaks of one
of these frail and lovely flowers which cannot be torn
from the tree to which they have grown, whose least
impurity would tarnish their whiteness. When Imogen
learns that her husband means to kill her as being faith-
less, she does not revolt at the outrage ; she has no pride,
but only love. " False to his bed ! " She faints at the
thought that she is no longer loved. When Cordelia
hears her father, an irritable old man, already almost
insane, ask her how she loves him, she cannot make
up her mind to say aloud the flattering protestations
which her sisters have been lavishing. She is ashamed
to display her tenderness before the world, and to buy
a dowry by it. He disinlierits her, and drives her away ;
she holds her tongue. And when she afterwards finds
him abandoned and mad, she goes on her knees before
him, with such a touching emotion, she weeps over that
dear insulted head with so gentle a pity, that you might
fancy it was the tender voice of a desolate but delighted
mother, kissing the pale lips of her cliild :

" you kind gods,
Cure this great breach in his abused nature !
The untuned and jarring senses, 0, wind up
Of this child-changed father ! . . .
my dear father ! Restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips ; and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made ! . . . Was this a fiwje
To be opposed against the warring winds 1

. . . Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit mo, should have stood that night
Against my fire. . . .
How does my royal lord ? How fares your miy'esty ? "*

^ Ki)ig Lear, iv. 7.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 101

If, in short, Shakspeare comes across a heroic char-
acter, worthy of Comeille, a Eoman, such as the mother
of Coriolanus, he will explain by passion, what
Comeille would have explained by heroism. He will
depict it violent and thirsting for the violent feelings
of glory. She will not be able to refrain herself. She
will break out into accents of triumph when she sees
her son crowned; into imprecations of vengeance
when she sees him banished. She wiU descend to the
vtdgarities of pride and anger ; she will abandon herself
to mad effusions of joy, to dreams of an ambitious
fancy,^ and wiU prove once more that the impassioned
imagination of Shakspeare has left its trace in all the
creatures whom it has called forth.

VII.

Nothing is easier to such a poet than to create per-
fect villains. Throughout he is handling the unruly
passions which make their character, and he never hits
upon the moral law which restrains them ; but at the
same time, and by the same faculty, he changes the inani-
mate masks, which the conventions of the stage mould
on an identical pattern, into living and illusory figures.

* ** ye're well met : the hoarded plague o' the gods

Requite your love !

If that I conld' for weeping, you should hear —

Kay, and you shall hear some. . . .

I'll tell thee what ; yet go :

Kay but thou shalt stay too : I would my son

Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,

His good sword in his hand." — Coriolanua, iv. 2.
See again, CoriolawuSy L 8, the frank and abandoned triumph of a woman
of the people ; " I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-
child than now in %X2X seeing he had proved himself a man."

102 THE RENAISSANCK book el

How shall a demon be made to look as real as a man ?
lago is a soldier of fortune who has roved the world
from Syria to England, who, nursed in the lowest ranks,
having had close acquaintance with the horrors of the
wars of the sixteenth century, had drawn thence the
maxims of a Turk and the philosophy of a butcher;
principles he has none left " my reputation, my re-
putation !" cries the dishonoured Cassio. ^As I am an
honest man," says lago, "I thought you had received
some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in
reputation."^ As for woman's virtue, he looks upon it
like a man who has kept company with slave-dealers.
He estimates Desdemona's love as he would estimate a
mare's : that sort of thing lasts so long — then . . •
And then he airs an experimental theory with precise
details and nasty expressions like a stud doctor. " It
cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her
love to the Moor, nor he his to her. . . . These Moors
are changeable in their wills; . . . the food that to
him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him
shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for
youth : when she is sated with his body, she will find
the error of her choice." ^ Desdemona on the shore,
trying to forget her cares, begs him to sing the praises
of her sex. For every portrait he finds the most insult-
ing insinuations. She insists, and bids him take the
case of a deserving woman. "Indeed" he replies, "She
was a wight, if ever such wight were, ... to suckle
fools and chronicle small beer." ^ He also says, when
Desdemona asks him what he would write in praise of
her : " gentle lady do not put me to't ; for I am
nothing, if not critical." * This is the key to his char-

* Othello, ii 8. « Ibid. I 8. » Ibid, ii 1. * Ibid,

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 103

acter. He despises man ; to him Desdemona is a little
wanton wench, Cassio an elegant word-shaper, Othello
a mad bull, Soderigo an ass to be basted, thumped,
made to go. He diverts himself by setting these
passions at issue ; he laughs at it as at a play. When
Othello, swooning, shakes in his convulsions, he rejoices
at this capital result : " Work on, my medicine, work !
Thus credulous fools are caught." ^ You would take him
for one of the poisoners of the time, studying the effect
of a new potion on a dying dog. He only speaks in
sarcasms : he has them ready for every one, even for
those whom he does not know. When he wakes Bra-
bantio to inform him of the elopement of his daughter,
he tells him the matter in coarse terms, sharpening the
sting of the bitter pleasantry, like a conscientious execu-
tioner, rubbing his hands when he hears the culprit
groan under the knife. "Thou art a villain!" cries
Brabantio. " You are — a senator ! " answers lago.
But the feature which reaUy completes him, and makes
him take rank with Mephistopheles, is the atrocious
truth and the cogent reasoning by which he likens his
crime to virtue.^ Cassio, imder his advice, goes to see
Desdemona, to obtain her intercession for him ; this
visit is to be the ruin of Desdemona and Cassio. lago,
left alone, hums for an instant quietly, then cries :

** And what's he then that says I play the yillain %
When this advice is free I give and honest,
Probal to thinking and indeed the course
To win the Moor again.*' *

» OOuUo, iv. 1.

* See the Uke cynicism and scepticism in Richard III. Both begin
liy slandering human nature, and both are misanthropical of malice
pr^feme.

« OthOlo, il 8.

104 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

To all these features must be added a diabolical eneigy,^
an inexhaustible inventiveness in images, caricatures,
obscenity, the manners of a guard-room, the brutal
bearing and tastes of a trooper, habits of dissimulation,
coolness, hatred, and patience, contracted amid the
perils and devices of a military life, and the continu-
ous miseries of long degradation and frustrated hope ;
you will understand how Shakspeare could transform
abstract treachery into a concrete form, and how lago's
atrocious vengeance is only the natural consequence of
his character. Life, and training.

VIII.

How much more visible is tliis impassioned and im-
fettered genius of Shakspeare in the great characters
which sustain the whole weight of the drama ! The
startling imagination, the furious velocity of the mani-
fold and exuberant ideas, passion let loose, rushing
upon death and crime, hallucinations, madness, all the
ravages of delirium bursting through will and reason :
such are the forces and ravings which engender them.
Shall I speak of dazzling Cleopatra, who holds
Antony in the whirlwind of her devices and caprices,
who fascinates and kills, who scatters to the winds the
lives of men as a handful of desert dust, the fatal
Eastern sorceress who sports with love and death, im-
petuous, irresistible, child of air and tire, whose life is
but a tempest, whose thought, ever barbed and broken,
is like the crackling of a lightning flash ? Of Othello,
who, beset by the graphic picture of physical adultery,
cries at every word of lago like a man on the rack ;

1 S€6 his conversation with Brabantio, then with Roderigo, Act L

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 105

who, his nerves hardened by twenty years of war and
shipwreck, grows mad and swoons for grief, and whose
soul, poisoned by jealousy, is distracted and disorganised
in convulsions and in stupor ? Or of old King Lear,
violent and weak, whose half-unseated reason is
gradually toppled over under the shocks of incredible
treacheries, who presents the frightful spectacle of mad-
ness, first increasing, then complete, of curses, bowlings,
superhuman sorrows, into which the transport of the
first access of fury carries him, and then of peaceful
incoherence, chattering imbecility, into which the shat-
tered man subsides ; a marvellous creation, the supreme
effort of pure imagination, a disease of reason, which
reason could never have conceived ? ^ Amid so many
portraitures let us choose two or three to indicate the
depth and nature of them all. The critic is lost in
Shakspeare, as in an immense town ; he will describe
a couple of monuments, and entreat the reader to im-
agine the city.

Plutarch's Coriolanus is an austere, coldly haughty
patrician, a general of the army. In Shakspeare's
hands he becomes a coarse soldier, a man of the people
as to his language and manners, an athlete of war, with
a voice like a trumpet ; whose eyes by contradiction
are filled with a rush of blood and anger, proud and
terrible in mood, a lion's soul in the body of a bidl.
The philosopher Plutarch told of him a lofty philosophic
action, saying that he had been at pains to save his
landlord in the sack of Corioli. Shakspeare's Corio-
lanus has indeed the same disposition, for he is really
a good fellow ; but when Lartius asks him the name

^ See again, in Timon, and Hotspur more particularly, perfect
examples of rehement and unreasoning imagination.

106 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

of this poor Volscian, in order to secure his Kberty, he

yawns out :

" By Jupiter ! forgot
I am weary ; yea, my memory is tired.
Have we no wine here 1 " ^

He is hot, he has been fighting, he must drink ; he
leaves his Volscian in chains, and thinks no more of
him. He fights like a porter, with shouts and insults,
and the cries from that deep chest are heard above the
din of the battle like the sounds from a brazen trumpet
He has scaled the walls of Corioli, he has butchered
tiU he is gorged with slaughter. Instantly he turns
to the army of Cominius, and arrives red with blood,
" as he were flay'd." " Come I too late ? " Cominius
begins to compliment him. " Come I too late ? " he
repeats. The battle is not yet finished : he embraces
Cominius :

" ! let me clip ye
In arms as sound as when I woo'd, in heart
As merry as when our nuptial day was done." *

For the battle is a real holiday to him. Such senses,
such a strong frame, need the outcry, the din of battle,
the excitement of death and wounds. This haughty
and indomitable heart needs the joy of victory and
destruction. Mark the display of his patrician arro-
gance and his soldier's bearing, when he is offered the
tenth of the spoils :

" I thank you, general ;
But cannot make my heart consent to take
A bribe to pay my sword." '

1 Coriolanus, I 9. « Ibid. I 6. » Ibid. i. 9.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 107

The soldiers cry, Marcius ! Marcius ! and the trumpets
sound. He gets into a passsion : rates the brawlers :

" No more, I say ! For that I have not wash'd
My nose that bled, or foil'd some debile wretch, —
. . . You shout me forth
In acclamations hyperbolical ;
As if I loved my little should be dieted
In pndses sauced with lies." ^

They are reduced to loading him with honours : Comi-
nius giveslhim a war-horse ; decrees him the cognomen
of Coriolanus : the people shout Caius Marcius Corio-
lanus ! He replies :

" I will go wash ;
And when my face is fair, you shall perceive
Whether I blush or no : howbeit, I thank you.
I mean to stride your steed." ^

This loud voice, loud laughter, blunt acknowledgment,
of a man who can act and shout better than speak,
foretell the mode in which he will treat the plebeians.
He loads them with insults; he cannot find abuse
enough for the cobblers, tailors, envious cowards, down
on their knees for a coin. " To beg of Hob and Dick ! "
" Bid them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean."
But he must beg, if he would be consul ; his friends
constrain him. It is then that the passionate soul,
incapable of self-restraint, such as Shakspeare knew
how to paint, breaks forth without hindrance. He is
there in his candidate's gown, gnashing his teeth, and
getting up his lesson in this style :

^ Coriolanw, I 9. * Ibid,

108 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

'' What roust I say t
* I pray, sir ' — Plague upon't ! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace : — * Look, sir, my wounds !
I got them in my countr/s service, when
Some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran
From the noise of our own drums.' " ^

The tribunes have no difficulty in stopping the election
of a candidate who begs in this fashion. They taunt
him in full senate, reproach him with his speech about the
com. He repeats it, with aggravations. Once roused,
neither danger nor prayer restrains him :

*^ His heart's his mouth :
And, being angry, 'does forget that ever
He heard the name of death." ^

He rails against the people, the tribunes, ediles, flat-
terers of the plebs. "Come, enough," says his friend
Menenius. " Enough, with over-measure," says Brutus
the tribune. He retorts :

" No, take more :
What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
Seal what I end withal ! ... At once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue ; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison." •

The tribune cries. Treason ! and bids seize him. He cries :

" Hence, old goat ! . . .
Hence, rotten thing ! or I shall shake thy bones
Out of thy garments ! " *

He strikes him, drives the mob off: he fancies himself
amongst Volscians. " On fair ground I could beat
forty of them ! " And when his friends hurry him off,
he threatens still, and

1 Coriolanua, iL 3. « Ibid, m. 1. » Jbid, * Ibid.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 109

" Speak(8) o' the people,
As if you (he) were a god to punish, not
A man of their infirmity." ^

Yet he bends before his mother, for he has recognised
in her a soul as lofty and a courage as intractable as
his own. He has submitted from his infancy to the
ascendency of this pride which he admires. Volumnia
reminds him : " My praises made thee first a soldier."
Without power over himself, continually tost on the
fire of his too hot blood, he has always been the arm,
she the thought. He obeys from involuntary respect,
like a soldier before his general, but with what effort !

" Coriolanus. The smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up
The glances of my sight ! a beggar's tongue
Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees
Who boVd but in my stirrup, bend like his
That hath received an alms ! — I will not do't. . . .

Volumnia, ... Do as thou hst.

Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
But owe thy pride thyself.

Cor, Pray, be content :
Mother, I am going to the market-place ;
Chide me no more. Ill mountebank their loves.
Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved
Of all the trades ia Rome." ^

He goes, and his friends speak for him. Except a few
bitter asides, he appears to be submissive. Then the
tribunes pronounce the accusation, and summon him to
answer as a traitor :

^ OoriolanuSt'm. 1. ' Ibid, iiL 2.

110 THE RENAISSANCE. bookil

''Cor. How! traitor!
Men. Nay, temperately : your promijse.
Cot. The fires i' the lowest hell fold-in the people !
Call me their traitor ! Thou injurious tribune !
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
In thy hands clutch'd as many millions, in
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
' Thou liest,' unto thee with a voice as free
As I do pray the gods." ^

His friends surround him, entreat him: he will not
listen ; he foams at the mouth, he is like a wounded
lion:

'' Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger
But with a grain a day, I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fidr word." *

The people vote exile, supporting by their shouts the
sentence of the tribune :

'' Cot. You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate

As reek o' the rotten fens, whose love I prize

As the dead carcasses of unburied men

That do corrupt my air, I banish you. . . . Despising,

For you, the city, thus I turn my back :

There is a world elsewhere." '

Judge of his hatred by these raging words. It goes on
increasing whilst waiting for vengeance. We find him
next with the Volscian army before Home. His friends
kneel before him, he lets them kneel. Old Menenius,
who had loved him as a son, only comes now to be
driven away. " Wife, mother, child, I know not" *

1 Coriolanus, iii. 8. « Ilnd. » Ibid. * Ilrid. y. 2.

CHAP. IV. SHAESPEASE. Ill

He knows not himself. For tMa strength of hating in
a noble heart is the same as the force of loving. He
haa transports of tenderness as of r^e, and can contain
himself no more in joy than in grief. He runs, spite
of his resolution, to his wife's arms ; he bends his Imee
before his mother. He had summoned the Volscian
chiefs to make them witnesses of his refusals ; and
before them, he grants all, and weeps. On his return
to Corioh, an insulting word from Aufidius maddens
him, and drives him upon the da^ers of the Volscians.
Vices and virtues, glory and misery, greatness and
feebleness, the unbridled passion which composes his
nature, endowed him with all.

If the life of Coriolanus is the history of a mood,
that of Macbeth iB the histoiy of a monomania. The
witches' prophecy haa sunk into his mind at once, like
a fixed idea. Gradually this idea corrupts the rest, and
transforms the whole man. He is haunted by it ; he for-
gets the thanes who surround him and "who stay upon his
leisure ; " he already sees in the future an indistinct
chaos of im^es of blood :

..." Why do I yield to that euggestiou

Whoee horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs ! . . .

My thou^t, whose murder yet is but tantastical.

Shakes so my single state of man that fduction

Is smothet'd in Burmise, and nothing ia

But what is not." ^
This is the language of hallucination. Macbeth's halluci-
nation becomes complete when his wife has persuaded
him to aasasainate the king. He sees in the air a
blood-^tAined di^er, " in form as palpable, as this
> Maatth,l 3.

1 1 2 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

which now I draw." His whole brain is filled with
grand and terrible phantoms, which the mind of a
common murderer could never have conceived: the
poetry of which indicates a generous heart, enslaved to
an idea of fate, and capable of remorse :

..." Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain'd sleep ; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf.
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. ... (A heU rings.)

I go, and it Ib done ; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to heU." ^

He has done the deed, and returns tottering, haggard^
like a drunken man. He is horrified at his bloody
hands, "these hangman's hands." Nothing now can
cleanse them. The whole ocean might sweep over them,
but they would keep the hue of murder. " What hands
are here ? ha, they pluck out mine eyes !" He is dis-
turbed by a word which the sleeping chamberlains
uttered :

" One cried, * God bless us !' and * Amen * the other ;
As they had seen mc with these hangman's hands.
Listening their fear, I could not say * Amen,'
When they did say, * Grod bless us ! ' . . ,
But wherefore could not I pronounce * Amen ! '
I had most need of blessing, and * Amen '
Stuck in my throat." '

^ Madfeth, ii. 1. « Ibid, ii 2.

CHAP. ly. SHAKSPEABE. 113

Then comee a strange dream ; a fiightful vision of the
punishment that awaita ^iti descends upon >iitn

Above the beating of his heart, the tingling of the
blood ^hich seethes in Ms brain, be had beard them

" ' Sleep no more !
Macbeth does murder Bleep,' the ianocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd slesve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course.
Chief nourisher in life's feast." ^

And the voice, like an angel's trumpet, calla him by
all his titles :

'"QIamis hath muidet'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more ; Uacbeth shall sleep no more ! ' " ^

This idea, incessantly repeated, beats in his brain, with
monotonous and quick strokes, like the tongue of a beU.
Insanity begins ; all the force of his mind is occupied
by keeping before him, in spite of himself, the image
of the man whom he has murdered in his sleep :

" To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself. (Knock.)
Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! " *

Thenceforth, in the rare intervals in which the fever of
his mind is assuaged, he is like '& man worn out by a
lot^ malady. It is the sad prostration of maniacs worn
out by their fits of rage :

" Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I bad lived a blessed time ; for, from tida instant
There's nothing serious in mortality :
' Itaditth, ii. !. > Ibid. * Ibid. ii. 3.

114 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

All IB but toys : renown and grace is dead ;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere leea
Is left this yaolt to brag of." ^

When rest has restored some force to the human machine^
the fixed idea shakes him again, and drives him onward^
like a pitiless horseman, who has left his panting horse
only for a moment, to leap again into the saddle, and
spur him over precipices. The more he has done, the

more he must do :

'' I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Ketuming were as tedious as go o'er." ^ . . .

He kills in order to preserve the fhiit of his murders.
The fatal circlet of gold attracts him like a magic jewel ;
and he beats down, from a sort of blind instinct, the
heads which he sees between the crown and him :

" But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds snfier.
Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly : better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave ;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ;
Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him fiuther." ^

Macbeth has ordered Banquo to be murdered, and
in the midst of a great feast he is informed of the
success of his plan. He smiles, and proposes Banquo's

1 Macbeth, ii. 3. « Ibid. iii. 4. » Ibid. UL 2.

CHAP. IT. SHAESPEASE. 115

healtlL Suddenly, conscience-smitten, he sees the
ghost of the murdered man ; for this phantom, which
Shakspeare sommous, is not a mere stage-trick: we
feel that here the snpematuial is unnecessary, and that
Macbeth would create it, even if hell would not send
it. With muscles twitching, dilated eyes, his month
half open with deadly terror, he sees it shake its bloody
head, and cries with that hoarse voice which is only to
be heard in majiiacs' cells :

" Fritliee, see there 1 Behold I look I lo ! how gay you I
Why, what caie II If thou canst Dod, speak too.
If chaniel-houBefl and onr graves must send
Thoee that ve bniy back, onr monumenta
ShaU be the mawa of kites. . . .
Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time, . . .
Ay, and aince too, murders have been perform'd
Too terrible for the ear : the timee have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end ; but now they riae agtun,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And posh as from our stools : . , .
Avaont ! and quit my eight 1 let the earth hide thee !
Thy bones are imuTowlees, thy blood is cold ;
ThoQ hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with I " '

Hifl body trembling like that of an epileptic, his teeth
denohed, foaming at the mouth, he sinks on the ground,
bis limbs writhe, shaken with convulsive quiverings,
whilst a dull sob swells h^ panting breast, and dies in
his swollen throat What joy can remain for a man
beset by such visions T The wide dark countTy, which
he surveys &om his towering castle, is but a fidd of

■ Madith, iif. 4.

1 1 6 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

death, haunted by ominous apparitions; Sootknd^
which he is depopulating, a cemetery,

" Where ... the dead man's knell
Is there scarce ask'd for who ; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken." ^

His soul is " full of scorpions." He has " supp'd full
with horrors," and the loathsome odour of blood has
disgusted him with all else. He goes stumbling over
the corpses which he has heaped up, with the mechani-
cal and desperate smile of a maniac-murderer. Thence-
forth death, life, all is one to him ; the habit of muider
has placed him out of the pale of humanity. They
tell him that his wife is dead :

" Macbeth. She should have died hereafter ;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !
Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more : it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing." '

There remains for him the hardening of the heart in
crime, the fixed belief in destiny. Himted down by
his enemies, "bear-like, tied to a stake," he fights,
troubled only by the prediction of the witches, sure of
being invulnerable so long as the man whom they have

1 Macbeth, iv. 3. « Ibid. v. 6.

CBAP. IT. SHAKSFEABE. 117

described, does not appear. Henceforth Mb thoughts
dwell in a supematuial world, and to the last he walks
with his eyea fixed on the dieam, which has possessed
him, from the first

The history of Hamlet, like that of Macbeth, is a
stoiy of moral poisoning. Hamlet has a delicate soul,
an impassioned imagination, like that of Shakspeare.
He has lived hitherto, occupied in noble ^ studies,
akiliul in mental and bodily exercises, with a taste for
art, loved by the noblest lather, enamoured of the
purest and most diarming girl, confiding, generous,
not yet having perceived, from the he^ht of the throne
to which he was bom, aught but the beauty, happiness,
grandeur of nature and humanity.^ On this soul, which
charact^ and training make more sensitive than others,
misfortune suddenly falls, extreme, overwhelming, of
the very kind to destroy all faith and eveiy motive for
action : with one glance he has seen all the vileness
of homanity; and this insight is given him in his
mother. His mind is- yet intact ; bnt judge from the
violence of his style, the crudity of his exact details,
die terrible tension of the whole nervous machine,
whether he has not already one foot on the verge of

"0 that this too, hw solid fleeh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew !
Or that the Bverlastii^ had not fix'd
His canon 'gunst self-slaughter ! O God ! Ckid r
How vtMj, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world !
fie on't ! ah fie .' 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nat
' aoeth^ JFiUulm XtiOtr.

118 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

PoBseBS it merely. That it should come to this !
But two months dead : nay, not so much, not two :
So excellent a king, ... so loving to my mother
That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven
Visit her ieuoe too roughly. Heaven and earth !

. . . And yety within a month, —
Let me not think on't — Frailty, thy name is woman 1 —
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor Other's body, . . .
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes.
She married. 0, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets 1
It is not nor it cannot come to good !
But break, my heart ; for I must hold my tongue 1 " ^

Here already are contortions of thought, a beginning
of hallucination, the symptozos of what is to come after.
In the middle of conversation the image of his father
rises before his mind. He thinks he sees him. How
then will it be when the " canonised bones have burst
their cerements," " the sepulchre hath oped his ponder-
ous and marble jaws/' and when the ghost comes in
the night, upon a high "platform" of land, to tell
him of the tortures of his prison of fire, and of the
fratricide, who has driven him thither ? Hamlet grows
faint, but grief strengthens him, and he has a desire for
living :

" Hold, hold, my heart ;
And you my sinews, grow not instant old.
But bear me stiffly up ! Remember thee !
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. — Remember thee 1

CHAP. IT. SHAESPEABR 119

Yea, from the table of 1117 memoiy

ni wipe aw^ all trivial food lecorda,

All nwB of boob^ all fomu, all pressom paat, . . .

And thy commandniept all alone shall lire. . . .

Tillain, Tillun, Biniliiig, damDcd villain 1

U7 tables, — meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a vilhun ;

At least Fm mire it may be so in Denmark :

So, nude, thew yon are." * (wHUng.)

Thia convijflive outt)iir3t^ Uiis fevered writing hand,
this frenzy of intentness, prelude the approach of a kind
of monomania. When hia iriends come up, he treats
them vith the speeches of a child or an idiot. He is
no longer master of bis words ; hollow phrases whirl
in his brain, and feU from hia mouth as in a dream.
They call bim ; he answers by imitating the cry of a
sportsman whistling to his falcon : " Hillo, ho, ho, hoy !
come, linrd, come." Whilst he is in the act of swearing
tiiem to secrecy, the ghost below repeats " Swear."
Hamlet cries, with a nervous excitement and a fitful

" Ah ha, boy I aay'st thou so 1 art thou there, truepenny I
Come on — you hear thb fellow in the cellarage, —
Consent to swear. . . ' .

Ohat {bauaA). Swear.

BattUet. Sie tt uHque f then well shift our ground.
Come hither, gentlemen. . . . Swear by my sword.

Ghoft (btntoA). Swear.

fiimi. Well said, old mole 1 canst work i' the earth so fest t
A worthy pionec 1 " '

Understand that as he says this his teeth chatter,
■ Samltt, L 5. ■ Ibid.

120 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

"pale as his shirt, his knees knocking eadi other."
Intense anguish ends with a kind of laughter, which is
nothing else than a spasm. Thenceforth Hamlet speaks
as though he had a continuous nervous attack. His mad-
ness is feigned, I admit ; but his mind, as a door whose
hinges are twisted, swings and bangs with every wind
with a mad haste and with a discordant noise. ' He
has no need to search fot the strange ideas, apparent
incoherencies, exaggerations, the deluge of sarcasms
which he accumulates. He finds them within him ;
he does himself no violence, he simply gives himself
up to himself. When he has the piece played which is
to unmask his uncle, he raises himself, lounges on the
floor, lays his head in Ophelia's lap ; he addresses the
actors, and comments on the piece to the spectators ;
his nerves are strung, his excited thought is like a sur-
ging and crackling flame, and cannot find fuel enough in
the multitude of objects surrounding it, upon all of which
it seizes. When the king rises immasked and troubled,
Hamlet sings, and says, " Would not this, sir, and a
forest of feathers — if the rest of my fortunes turn
Turk with me — ^with two Provincial roses on my razed
shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir !"^
And he laughs terribly, for he is resolved on murder.
It is clear that this state is a disease, and that the man
will not survive it

In a soul so ardent of thought, and so mighty of
feeling, what is left but disgust and despair? We
tinge all nature with the colour of our thoughts ; we
shape the world according to our own ideas ; when our
soul is sick, we see nothing but sickness in the universe :

* Hamlctj in. 2.

CHAF. IV. SHAKSFEUtE. 121

" This goodly firama, the earth, eeetiu to ma a sterile pro-
montoiy, this moat excellent canopy, the air, look you, this bntve
Overhanging finnament, tills nuyestical loof &ett«d with goldoi
fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man ! hoir
noble in leason I hov infinite in fitcul^ I in fonn and moving
how express and admirable 1 in action how like an angel I in
apprehension how like a god I the beauty of the world ! the
paragon of "■''""■I* 1 And yet, to me, what is this quinteraence
oS dnstl man delif^ts not me : no, nor woman neither." ^

Henceforth his thought sullies whatever it touches.
He tails bitterly hefore Ophelia against marriage and
love. Beauty ! Innocence ! Beauty is but a means of
prostituting innocence : " Get thee to a nunnery : why
wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners 1 . . . What
should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and
heaven 7 We are arrant knaves, all ; believe none of
us."*

Whan he has killed Polonius by accident, he hardly
repents it; it is oile fool less. He jeers li^b-
rioosly:

" King. Now HuBlet, where's Polonius t
HamUt. At supper.
K. At supper I where t

if. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten : a certain
etmvocation of politic worms are e'en at him."°

And he repeats in five or six fashions these gravedigger
jests. His thoughts already inhabit a churchyard ; to
this hopeless philosophy a genuine man is a corpse.
Public functions, honours, passions, pleasures, projects,
sdence, all this is bat a borrowed mask, which death

■ HavtUt, iL 2. > ndd. iii 1. ■ Hid. iv. 3.

122 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

removes, so that people may see what we are, an evil-
smelling and grinning skulL It is this sight he goes
to see by Ophelia's grave. He counts the skulls which
the gravedigger turns up ; this was a lawyer^s, that a
courtier^s. What bows, intrigues, pretensions, arro-
gance! And here now is a clown knocking it about with
his spade, and playing " at loggats with *em." Caesar
and Alexander have turned to clay and make the earth
fat ; the masters of the world have served to " patch a
walL" " Now get you to my lady's chamber, and teU
her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that."^ When a man has
come to this, there is nothing left but to di&

This heated imagination, which explains Hamlet's
nervous disease and his moral poisoning, explains also
his conduct. If he hesitates to kill his uncle, it is not
from horror of blood or from our modem scruples. He
belongs to the sixteenth century. On board ship he
wrote the order to behead Bosencrantz and Guildenstem,
and to do so without giving them " shriving-time."
He killed Polonius, he caused Ophelia's death, and has
no great remorse for it If for once he spared his uncle,
it was because he found him praying, and was afraid of
sending him to heaven. He thought he was killing
him, when he killed Polonius. What his imagination
robs him of, is the coolness and strength to go quietly
and with premeditation to plunge a sword into a
breast. He can only do the thing on a sudden sug-
gestion ; he must have a moment of enthusiasm ; he
must think the king is behind the arras, or else, seeing
that he himself is poisoned, he must find his victim
under his foil's point. He is not master of his acts ;

^ Hamlet, y. 1.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 123

opportunity dictates tliem; he cannot plan a murder, but
must improvise it A too lively imagination exhausts
the will, by the strength of images which it heaps up,
and by the fury of intentness which absorbs it. You
recognise in him a poet's soul, made not to act, but to
dream, which is lost in contemplating the phantoms of
its creation, which sees the imaginary wld too clearly
to play a part in the real world ; an artist whom evil
chance has made a prince, whom worse chance has made
an avenger of crime, and who, destined by nature for
genius, is condemned by fortune to madness and
unhappiness. Hamlet is Shakspeare, and, at the close
of this gallery of portraits which have all some features
of his own, Shakspeare has painted himself in the most
striking of alL

If Bacine or Comeille had framed a psychology, they
would have said, with Descartes: Man is an incor-
poreal soul, served by organs, endowed with reason and
will, dwelling in palaces or porticos, made for conversa-
tion and society, whose harmonious and ideal action is
developed by discourse and replies, in a world con-
structed by logic beyond the realms of time and placa

If Shakspeare had framed a psychology, he would
have said, with Esquirol :^ Man is a nervous machine,
governed by a mood, disposed to hallucinations, csuried
away by unbridled passions, essentially unreasoning, a
mixture of animal and poet, having instead of mind
rapture, instead of virtue sensibility, imagination for
prompter and guide, and led at random, by the most
determinate and complex circumstances, to sorrow,
crime, madness, and deatL

^ A French physician (1772-1844), celebrated for his eudeayours to
improTe the treatment of the insane. — Tk.

124 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

IX.

Could sncli a poet always confine himself to the
imitation of nature ? Will this poetical world which
is going on in his brain, never break loose from the
laws of the world of reality? Is he not powerful
enough to follow his own laws ? He is ; and the poetry
of Shakspeare naturally finds an outlet in the fantasti-
cal This is the highest grade of imreasoning and
creative imagination. Despising ordinary logic, it
creates another; it unites facts and ideas in a new
order, apparently absurd, in reality regular; it lays
open the land of dreams, and its dreams seem to us
the truth.

When we enter upon Shakspeare's comedies, and even
his half-dramas,^ it is as though we met him on the
threshold, like an actor to whom the prologue is com-
mitted, to prevent misunderstanding on the part of the
public, and to tell them : " Do not take too seriously
what you are about to hear: I am amusing myself.
My brain, being full of fancies, desired to array them,
and here they are. Palaces, distant landscapes, trans-
parent clouds which blot in the morning the horizon
with their grey mists, the red and glorious flames into
which the evening sun descends, white cloisters in
endless vista through the ambient air, grottos, cottages,
the fantastic pageant of all human passions, the irregular
sport of unlooked-for adventures, — this is the medley
of forms, colours, sentiments, which I let become en-
tangled and confused in my presence, a many-tinted
skein of glistening silks, a slender arabesque, whose

* Twelfth Night, As you Like it, Tempest^ Winter's Tale^ etc,
CymbdiiUf Merchant of Venice, etc.

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEARE. 125

sinuous curves, crossing and mingled, bewilder the
mind by the whimsical variety of their injSnite complica-
tions. Don't regard it as a picture. Don't look for a
precise composition, a sole and increasing interest, the
skilful management of a weU-ordered and congruous plot.
I have tales and novels before me which I am cutting
up into scenes. Never mind thejinis, I am amusing
myself on the road. It is not the end of the journey
which pleases me, but the journey itself. Is there any
need in going so straight and quick ? Do you only care
to know whether the poor merchant of Venice wUl'escape
Shylock's knife? Here are two happy lovers, seated
under the palace walls on a calm night ; wouldn't you
like to listen to the peaceful reverie which rises like a
perfume {rom the bottom of their hearts ?

" How sweet the moonliglit sleeps upon this bank !
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold :
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ;
Such harmony is in immortal souls ;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

(Enter musicians,)
Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn :
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,*
And draw her home with music.

Jessica. I am never meny when I hear sweet music." ^

* Merchant of Venice^ ▼. 1.

126 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

" Have I not the right, when I see the big laughing
face of a clownish servant, to stop near him, see him
gesticulate, frolic, gossip, go through his hundred pranks
and his hundred grimaces, and treat myself to the
comedy of his spirit and gaiety ? Two fine gentlemen
pass by. I hear the rolling fire of their metaphors, and
I follow their skirmish of wit Here in a comer is the
artless arch face of a young wencL Do you forbid me
to linger by her, to watch her smiles, her sudden blushes,
the chUdish pout of her rosy lips, the coquetry of her
pretty motions ? You are in a great hurry if the prattle
of this fresh and musical voice can't stop you. Is it no
pleasure to view this succession of sentiments and
faces ? Is your fancy so dull, that you must have the
mighty mechanism of a geometrical plot to shake it ?
My sixteenth century playgoers were easier to move.
A sunbeam that had lost its way on an old wall, a foolish
song thrown into the middle of a drama, occupied their
mind as well as the blackest of catastrophes. After the
horrible scene in which Shylock brandished his butcher's
knife before Antonio's bare breast, they saw just as
willingly the petty household wrangle, and the amusing
bit of raillery which ends the piece. Like soft moving
water, their soul rose and sank in an instant to the levd
of the poet's emotion, and their sentiments readily
flowed in the bed he had prepared for them. They let
him stray here and there on his journey, and did not
forbid him to make two voyages at once. They allowed
several plots in one. If but the slightest thread united
them it was sufficient Lorenzo eloped with Jessica,
Shylock was frustrated in his revenge, Portia's suitors
failed in the test imposed upon them ; Portia, disguised
as a doctor of laws, took from her husband the ring

dUF. IT. SHAESPEABE. 127

vhich he had promised nevei to part with ; these three
or four comedies, diaanited, mingled, were shuffled and
unfolded together, like an. unknotted akein in which
threads of a hundred colours are entwined. T(^ther
with diversity, my spectators allowed improbability.
Comedy is a slight winged creature, which flutters from
dream to dream, whose wings you wotdd break if you
held it captive in the narrow prison of common sense.
Do not piesB its fictions too hard ; do not probe their
contents. Let them float before your eyes like a
charming swift dream. Let tiie fleeting apparition
plunge back into the bright misty land from whence it
came. For an instant it deluded you ; let it sufBca.
It is sweet to leave the world of realities behind you ;
the mind rests amidst impossibilities. We are happy
when delivered from the rough chains of logic, to wander
amongst strange adventures, to live in sheer romance,
and know that we are living there. I do not try to
deceive you, and make you believe in the world where
I take yon. A man must disbelieve it in order to enjoy
it. We must give ourselves up to illusion, and feel
that we are giving ourselves up to it. We must smile
as we listen. We smile in The Winter's Tale, when
Hennione descends from her pedestal, and when Leontes
discover his wife in the statue, having believed her to
be dead. We smile in GyvAeline, when we see the lone
caTem in which the young princes have lived like
savage hunt«ra. Improbability deprives emotions of
their sting. The events interest or touch us without
making us suffer. At the very moment when sympathy
is too intense, we remind ourselves that it is all a fancy.
They become like distant objects, whose distance softens
their outline, and wraps them in a luminous veil of blue

128 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

air. Your true comedy is an opera. We listen to
sentiments without thinking too much of plot We
follow the tender or gay melodies without reflecting that
they interrupt the action. We dream elsewhere on
hearing music ; here I bid you dream on hearing
verse."

Then the speaker of the prologue retires, and the
actors come on.

As you Like it is a caprice/ Action there is none ;
interest barely ; likelihood still less. And the whole is
charming. Two cousins, princes' daughters, come to a
forest with a court clown, Celia disguised as a shep-
herdess, Eosalind as a boy. They find here the old
duke, Eosalind*s father, who, driven out of his duchy,
lives with his friends like a philosopher and a hunter.
They find amorous shepherds, who with songs and
prayers pursue intractable shepherdesses. They discover
or they meet with lovers who become their husbands.
Suddenly it is announced that the wicked Duke Fred-
erick, who had usurped the crown, has just retired to a
cloister, and restored the throne to the old exiled duke.
Every one gets married, every one dances, everything
ends wnth a " rustic revelry." Where is the pleasant-
ness of these puerilities ? First, the fact of its being
puerile ; the absence of the serious is refreshing. There
are no events, and there is no plot We gently follow
the easy current of graceful or melancholy emotions,
which takes us away and moves us about without weary-
ing. The place adds to the illusion and charm. It is

* In English, a word is wanting to express the French fantaisie
used by M. Taine, in describing this scene : what in music is called a
eapriecio. Tennyson calls the Princess a medley, but it is ambigaouA.
— Tr.

an aatnunn forest, in vhidi the sultry mys peimeate the
blushing oak leaves, or the half-stript ashes tremble and
smile to the feeble breath of evening. The lovers
wander by brooks that "brawl" under antique roots.
As yon listen to them, you see the slim birches, whose
cloak of lace grows glossy under the slant raya of the
sun that gilds them, and the thoughts wander down the
moesy vistas in which their footsteps are not beard.
What better place could be chosen for the comedy of
sentiment and the play of heart-fancies ! Is not this
a fit spot in vihich to listen to love-talk ? Some one
has seen Orlando, Rosalind's lover, in this glade; she
hears it and blushes. " Alas the day 1 . . , What did
lie, when thon sawest him? What said he? How
looked he ? Wherein went he ? What makes he here ?
Did he ask for me ? Where remains be ? How parted
he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again?"
Then, with a lower voice, somewhat hesitating : " Looks
be as freshly as be did the day he wrestled ? " She is
not yet exhansted : " Do you not know I am a woman ?
Wben I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on." * One
question follows another, she closes the mouth of her
friend, who is ready to answer. At every word she
jests, but ^tated, blushing, with a forced gaiety ; her
bosom heaves, and her heart beats. Nevertheless she
is calmer when Orlando comes ; bandies words with
him ; sheltered xmder her di^uise, she makes him con-
fess that he loves Bosalind. Then she plagues him,
like tlie frolic, the wag, the coquette she is. " Why,
how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while ?
You a lover ? " Orlando repeats tliat he loves Bosalind,
and she pleases herself by making him repeat it more
' jia you Like it, iii. 3.
VOL. n. K

130 THE RENAISSANCE. bookii.

than once. She sparkles with wit, jests, mischievous
pranks; pretty fits of anger, feigned sulks, bursts of
laughter, deafening babble, engaging caprices. " Come,
woo me, woo me ; for now I am in a holiday humour,
and like enough to consent What would you say to
me now, an I were your very very Rosalind ? " And
every now and then she repeats with an arch smile,
" And I am your Rosalind ; am I not your Rosalind ? " ^
Orlando protests that he would die. Die ! Who ever
thought of dying for love ! Leander ? He took one
baih too many in the HeUespont ; so poets have said he
died for love. Troilus ? A Greek broke his head with
a club ; so poets have said he died for love. Come,
come, Rosalind will be softer. And then she plays at
marriage with him, and makes Celia pronounce the
solemn words. She irritates and torments her pretended
husband ; tells him all the whims she means to indulge
in, all the pranks she will play, all the teasing he will
have to endure. The retort^s come one after another
like fireworks. At every phrase we follow the looks of
these sparkling eyes, the curves of this laughing mouth,
the quick movements of this supple figure. It is a
bird's petulance and volubility. " coz, coz, coz, my
pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom
deep I am in love." Then she provokes her cousin
Celia, sports with her hair, calls her by every woman's
name. Antitheses without end, words all a-jimible,
quibbles, pretty exaggerations, word-racket; as you
Usten, you fancy it is the warbling of a nightingale.
The trill of repeated metaphors, the melodious roll of
the poetical gamut, the summer-warbling rustling under
the foliage, change the piece into a veritable opera.

^ As you Like it, ir. 1.

CHIP. IT. SHAESPEARR 131

The three lovers end by chanting a sort of trio. He
first throws out a fancy, the others take it up. Four
times this strophe is renewed ; and the symmetry of
ideas, added to the jingle of the rhymes, makes of a
dialc^e a concerto of love :

" Fhd)e. Oood shepherd, tell this youth what 'ti« to lova

Silviut. It is to be all made of eighs and tears ;
And so am I for Phebe.

P. And I for Ganymede.

Orlando. And I for BoeaUnd,

Boialifid. And I for no woman. . . .

S. It ie to be all made of &nta;^,
All made of pasaiou, and all made of wishes,
All adoration, duty, and observance,
All hnmbleness, all patience and impatience,
All puri^, all trial, all obeerrance ;
Ajid 80 I am for Phebe.

P. And 80 am I for Ganymede.

0. And so am I for Roealind.

R. And BO am I for no woman." '

The necessity of singing is so urgent, that a minute
later soi^ break out of themselves. The prose and
the conversation end in lyric poetry, We pass straight
on into these odes. We do not find ourselves in a
new country. We feel the emotion and foolish gaiety
as if it were a holiday. We see the graceful couple
whom the song of the two pages brings before us,
passing in the misty light " o'er the green com-field,"
amid the ham of sportive insects, on the finest day
of t^e flowering spring-time. Unlikelihood grows
natural, and we are not aatonished when we see Hymen

> As you Xttt.i^ r. S.

132 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

leading the two brides by the hand to give them to
their husbands.

Whilst the young folks sing, the old folk talk.
Their Ufe also is a novel, but a sad on& Shakspeaie's
delicate soul, bruised by the shocks of social life,
took refuge in contemplations of solitary Ufe. To for-
get the strife and annoyances of the world, he must
bury himself in a wide silent forest, and

'' Under the shade of melancholy boughs,
Loose and n^lect the creeping hours of tune." ^

We look at the bright images which the sun carves
on the white beech-boles, the shade of trembling leaves
flickering on the thick moss, the long waves of the
sunmiit of the trees ; then the sharp sting of care is
blunted ; we suffer no more, simply remembering that
we suffered once ; we feel nothing but a gentle misan-
thropy, and being renewed, we are the better for it.
The old duke is happy in his exile. Solitude has given
him rest, delivered him from flattery, reconciled him
to nature. He pities the stags which he is obliged to
hunt for food :

" Come, shall we go and kill us venison f
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored. "^

Nothing sweeter than this mixture of tender compassion,
dreamy philosophy, delicate sadness, poetical complaints,
and rustic songs. One of the lords sings :

» As you Like it, ii 7. « Ihid, ii. 1.

CHAP. iv. SHAESP£ABE. 133

" Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not ao unkind

As man's ingratitude ;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen.

Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho ! sing, heigh-ho I unto the green holly :
Most friendship is feigning, most loTing mere folly :
Then, heigh-ho, the holly !
This life is most jolly." ^

Amongst these lords is found a soul that suffers more,
Jacques the melancholy, one of Shakspeare's best-loved
characters, a transparent mask behind which we perceive
the face of the poet He is sad because he is tender ;
he feels the contact of things too keenly, and what
leaves others indifferent, makes him weep.^ He does
not scold, he is sad ; he does not reason, he is moved ;
he has not the combative spirit of a reforming moralist ;
his soul is sick and weary of life. Impassioned im-
agination leads quickly to disgust. like opium, it ex-
cites and shatters. It leads man to the loftiest philo-
sophy, then lets him down to the whims of a child
Jacques leaves other men abruptly, and goes to the quiet
nooks to be alone. He loves his sadness, and would
not exchange it for joy. Meeting Orlando, he says :

*' Rosalind Ib your love's name ?
Orlando. Yes, just
Jaequ69. 1 do not like her name." ^

He has the fancies of a nervous woman. He is scan-
dalised because Orlando writes sonnets on the forest

^ As you LQce it, ii. 7.

* Compare Jacques wiUi the Alceste of Moli&re. It is the contrast
qetween a misanthrope through reasoning and one through imagination.
' AsycuLikeU, iii 2.

134 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

trees. He is eccentric, and finds subjects of grief and
gaiety, where others would see nothing of the sort :

^' A fool, a fool ! I met a fool i* the forest,
A motley fool ; A miserable world I
As I do Uve by food, I met a fool ;
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the son,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms and yet a motley fooL . .

Jacques hearing him moralise in such a manner b^ins
to laugh " sans intermission" that a fool could be so
meditative :

noble fool ; A worthy fool ! Motley's the only wear. . . .

that I were a fool !

1 am ambitious for a motley coat." ^

The next minute he returns to his melancholy disserta-
tions, bright pictures whose vivacity explains his char-
acter, and betrays Shakspeare, hiding under his name :

'' All the world's a stage.
And all the men and women merely players :
They have their exits and their entrances ;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the in&nt,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel.
And shining morning face, creeping Uke snail
Unwillingly to school And then the lover.
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Th^ a soldier.
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

^ As you Like U,u,7,

CHAP. IV. SHAKSPEAKE. 135

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modem instances ;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon.

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice.

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all.

That ends this strange eventful history.

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." ^

As you Like t^ is a half dream. Midsummer Night's
Dream is a complete one.

The scene, buried in the far-off mist of fabulous
antiquity, carries us back to Theseus, Duke of Athens,
who is preparing his palace for his marriage with the
beautiful queen of the Amazons. The style, loaded
with contorted images, fills the mind with strange and
splendid visions, and the airy elf-world divert the
comedy into the fairy-land from whence it sprung.

Love is still the theme : of all sentiments, is it not
the greatest fancy-weaver ? But love is not heard here
in the charming prattle of Eosalind ; it is glaring, like
the season of the year. It does not brim over in slight
conversations, in supple and skipping prose ; it breaks
forth into big rhyming odes, dressed in magnificent
metaphors, sustained by impassioned accents, such as a
warm night, odorous and star-spangled, inspires in a
poet and a lover. Lysander and Hermia agree to meet.

^ Ab you Like U, IL 7.

136 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

**Lytander. To-morrow night when Phoebe doth behold
Her fiilTer Tisage in the wateiy glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
A time that lorers' flights doth still conceal.
Through Athens' gates hare we devised to steaL

Hermia, And in the wood, where often yon and I
Upon fiiint primrose-beds were wont to lie. . . .
There my Lysander and myself shall meet" ^

They get lost, and fall asleep, wearied, under the trees.
Puck squeezes in the youth's eyes the juice of a
magic flower, and changes his heart Presently, when
he awakes, he will become enamoured of the first
woman he sees. Meanwhile Demetrius, Hermia's re-
jected lover, wanders with Helena, whom he rejects, in
the solitary wood. The mi^c flower changes him in
turn : he now loves Helena. The lovers flee and
pursue one another, beneath the loflby trees, in the calm
night We smile at their transports, their complaints,
their ecstasies, and yet we join in them. This passion
is a dream, and yet it moves us. It is like those airy
webs which we find at morning on the crest of the
hedgerows where the dew has spread them, and whose
weft sparkles like a jewel-easket Nothing can be
more fragile, and nothing more graceful The poet
sports with emotions ; he mingles, confuses, redoubles,
interweaves them ; he twines and imtwines these loves
like the mazes of a dance, and we see the noble and
tender figures pass by the verdant bushes, beneath the
radiant eyes of the stars, now wet with tears, now
bright with rapture. They have the abandonment of
true love, not the grossness of sensual love. Nothing
causes us to fall from the ideal world in which Shak-

* Midmmmer NigM$ Dream, L 1.

CHAP. IT. SHAK8PEARE. 137

speare conducts tis. Dazzled by beauty, they adore it,
and the spectacle of their happiness, their emotion, and
their tenderness, is a Mnd of enchantment

Above these two conples flutters and hums the
svarm of elves and fairies. They alBo love. Titania,
their queen, has a young boy for her favourite, son of
an Indian king, of whom Oberon, her husband, wishes
to deprive her. They quarrel, so that the elves creep
for fear into the acorn cups, in the golden primroses.
Oberon, by way of vei^eance, touches Titania's sleeping
eyes with the magic flower, and thus on waking the
oimblest and most charming of the fairies finds herself
enamoured of a stupid blockhead with an ass's head.
She kneels before him ; she sets on his " hairy temples
a coronet of &esh and fragrant flowers :"

" And that same dew, which sometime on the buds
Waa wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty floweret's eyee,
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail" >

She calls round her all her fairy attendants ;

" Be kind and courteous b> this gentleman ;
Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyee ;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries.
With purple gntpee, green figs, and mulberries ;
The honey-bags steel from the humble-bees,
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs
And light them at the fiery glow-wonn's ejee,
To have my love to bed and to arise ;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies
To fiui the moonbeams from his Blee{nng eyes. ...
Come, wiut upon him ; lead him to my bower.
* Jtidfitmmer NigM* Dman, ir. 1.

138 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

The moon, methinks, looks with a wateiy eye ;
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
Lamenting some enforced chastity.
Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently." ^

It was necessary, for her love brayed horribly, and
to all the offers of Titania, replied vnth a petition for
hay. What can be sadder and sweeter than this irony
of Shakspeare ? What raillery against love, and what
tenderness for love ! The sentiment is divine : its
object unworthy. The heart is ravished, the eyes blind.
It is a golden butterfly, fluttering in the mud; and
Shakspeare, whilst painting its misery, preserves all its
beauty:

'' Come, sit thee down upon this floweiy bed.
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head.
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. ...
Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. . . .
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist ; the female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
0, how I love thee ! how I dote on thee ! " *

At the return of morning, when

" The eastern gate, all fiery red.
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams," ^,

the enchantment ceases, Titania awakes on her couch
of wild thyme and drooping violets. She drives the
monster away ; her recollections of the night are efifaced
in a vague twilight :

* Midsummer NighCs Dream^ iiL 1. ' Ibid. iv. 1. ■ Ibid, iiL 2.

CHAP. iv. SHAESPEARE. 139

" These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. " ^

And the fairies

'' Go seek some dew drops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear." ^

Such is Shakspeare's fantasy, a slight tissue of bold
inventions, of ardent passions, mdancholy mockery,
dazzling poetry, such as one of Titania's elves would
have made. Nothing could be more like the poet's
mind than these nimble genii, children of air and flame,
whose flights "compass the globe" in a second, who
glide over the foam of the waves and skip between the
atoms of the winds. Ariel flies, an invisible songster,
aroimd shipwrecked men to console them, discovers the
thoughts of traitors, pursues the savage beast Caliban,
spreads gorgeous visions before lovers, and does all in
a lightning-flash :

'' Where the bee sucks, there suck I :
In a cowslip's bell I lie. . . .
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. . . .
I drink the air before me, and return
Or ere your pulse twice beat." *

Shakspeare glides over things on as swift a wing, by
leaps as sudden, with a touch as delicate.

What a soul ! what extent of action, and what
sovereignty of an unique faculty ! what diverse crea-
tions, and what persistence of the same impress !
There they all are united, and all marked by the same

^ Midsummer Ntght*8 Dream, iv. i. * Ibid, ii 1,

■ Tempest f v. 1.

140 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

sign, void of will and reason, governed by mood,
imagination, or pure passion, destitute of the faculties
contrary to those of the poet, dominated by the cor-
poreal type which his painter's eyes have conceived, en-
dowed by the habits of mind and by the vehement
sensibility which he finds in himself.^ Go through the
groups, and you will only discover in them divers forms
and divers states of the same power. Here, a herd of
brutes, dotards, and gossips, made up of a mechanical
imagination ; further on, a company of men of wit, ani-
mated by a gay and foolish imagination ; then, a
charming swarm of women whom their delicate im-
agination raises so high, and their self-forgetting love
carries so far ; elsewhere a band of villains, hardened
by imbridled passions, inspired by artistic rapture ; in
the centre a mournful train of grand characters, whose
excited brain is filled with sad or criminal visions, and
whom an inner destiny urges to murder, madness, or
deatL Ascend one stage, and contemplate the whole
scene : the aggregate bears the same mark as the details.
The drama reproduces promiscuously uglinesses, base-
nesses, horrors, unclean details, profligate and ferocious
manners, the whole reality of life just as it is, when it
is unrestrained by decorum, common sense, reason, and
duty. Comedy, led through a phantasmagoria of pic-
tures, gets lost in the likely and the unlikely, with no
other connection but the caprice of an amused imagina-
tion,Vantonly disjointed and romantic, an'^opera without
music, a concerto of melancholy and tender sentiments,
which bears the mind into the supernatural world, and
brings before our eyes on its fairy-wings the genius

^ There is the same law in the organic and in the moral world. It
is what Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire calls unity of composition.

CHAP. IT. SHAESPEARE. Ul

which has created it Look now. Do you not see the
poet behind the crowd of his creations ? They have
heralded Us approach. They have all shown some-
what of him. Iteady, impetuoos, impassioned, delicate,
his genius is pure imagination, touched more vividly and
by ^ghter things th&n ours. Hence his style, blooming
with exuberant ime^es, loaded with ex^gerated meta-
pbors, whofe strangeness is like incoherence, whose
wealth is superabundant, the work of a mind, which, at
the least incitement, produces too much and takes too
wide leaps. Hence this involuntaty psychology, and this
terrible penetration, which instantaneously perceiving all
the effocts of a sitoation, and all the details of a charac-
ter, concentrates them in every response, and gives to a
fignie a relief and a coloniii^ which create illusion.
Hence oui emotion and tenderness. We say to him, as
Deademona to Othello : " I love thee for the battles,
si^es, fortunes thou hast psssed, and for the distressful
stroke that thy youth suffered."

142 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

<A

CHAPTER V.

I.

"I WOULD have my reader fully understand/' says
Luther in the preface to his complete works, " that I
have been a monk and a bigoted Papist, so intoxicated,
or rather so swallowed up in papistical doctrines, that
I was quite ready, if I had been able, to kill or procure
the death of those who should have rejected obedience
to the Pope by so much as a syllable. I was not all
cold or all ice in the Pope's defence, like Eckius and
his like, who veritably seemed to me to constitute
themselves his defenders rather for their belly's sake
than because they looked at the matter seriously.
More, to this day they seem to mock at him, like
Epicureans. I for my part proceeded frankly, like a
man who has horribly feared the day of judgment, and
who yet hoped to be saved with a shaking of all his
bones." Again, when he saw Rome for the first time,
he prostrated himself, saying, " I salute thee, holy Rome
. . . bathed in the blood of so many martyrs." Imagine,
if you may, the effect which the shameless paganism
of the Italian Renaissance had upon such a mind, so
loyal, so Christian. The beauty of art, the charm of
a refined and sensuous existence, had taken no hold
upon him ; he judged morals, and he judged them with

CBAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 143

Ilia conscience only. He r^arded tMa southern civili-
sation with the eyee of a man of the north, and under-
stood its vices only, like Ascham, who said he had seen
in Venice "more libertie to sinne in ix dayes than
ever I heard tell of in out noble Citie of London in
IX yeare." ^ Like Arnold and Channing in the present
day, like all the men of Germanic ^ race and education,
he was horrified at this voluptuous life, now reckless
and now licentious, but always void of moral principles,
given up to passion, enlivened by irony, caring only for
the present, destitute of belief in the infinite, with no
other worship than that of visible beauty, oo other
object than the search after pleasure, no other religion
than the terrors of imagination and the idolatry of the
" eyes.

" I would not," said Luther afterwards, " for a
hundred thousand florins have gone without seeing
Bome; I should always have doubted whether I was
not doing injustice to the Pope. The crimes of Bome
are incredible ; no one will credit so great a perversity
who has not the witness of his eyes, ears, personal
knowle^e. . . . There reigned all the villaniea and
iitfomies, all the atrocious crimes, in particular blind
greed, contempt of God, perjuries, sodomy. ... We
Germans swill liqueur enough to split us, whilst the
Italians are sober. Sut they are the most impious of
men; they make a mock of true religion, they scorn
the rest of us Christians, because we believe everything
in Scripture. . . . There is a saying in Italy which
they make use of when they go to church : ' Come

* Boger iMhant, Tht Seholemaaler (1G7D}, ed. Arbcr, 1870, first
book, p. 63.

* Boe, in Ogrinti^ Lord Veril's jodgmeot on the Italiuii.

144 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

and let ns conform to the popular error/ * If we were
obliged/ they say again, ' to believe in every word of
God, we should be the most wretched of men, and we
should never be able to have a moment's cheerfulness ;
we must put a good face on it, and not believe every-
thing/ This is what Leo X. did, who, hearing a
discussion as to the immortality or mortality of the
soul, took the latter sida ' For,* said he, * it would
be terrible to believe in a future state. Conscience is
an evil beast, who arms man against himself/ . . . The
Italians are either epicureans or* superstitious. The
people fear St. Anthony and St Sebastian more than
Christ, because of the plagues they send. This is why,
when they want to prevent the Italians from commit-
ting a nuisance anywhere, they paint up St. Anthony
with his fiery lance. Thus do they live in extreme
superstition, ignorant of God's word, not believing the
resurrection of the flesh, nor life everlasting, and fearing
only temporal evils. Their blasphemy also is frightful,
. . . and the cruelty of their revenge is atrocious.
When they cannot get rid of their enemies in any
other way, they lay ambush for them in the churches,
so that one man cleft his enemy's head before the altar.
. . . There are often murders at funerals on account
of inheritances. . . . They celebrate the Carnival with
extreme impropriety and foUy for several weeks, and
they have made a custom of various sins and extrava-
gances at it, for they are men without conscience, who
live in open sin, and make light of the marriage tia
. . . We Germans, and other simple nations, are like
a bare clout ; but the Italians are painted and speckled
with all sorts of false opinions, and disposed still to
embrace many worse. . . . Their fasts are more splen-

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. US

did than our most stunptnous feasts. They dress
extraTagantly ; where we spend a florin on bur clothes,
they put down ten florins to have a silk coat . . .
"When they (the Italians) are chaste, it is sodomy with
them. There is no society amongst them. No oue
trusts another ; they do not come tc^ether freely, like
OS Germans; they do not allow strangers to speak
publicly with their wires : compared with the Germans,
they are altogether men of the cloister." These hard
words are weak compared with the facts.^ Treasons,
assassinations, tortures, open debauchery, the practice
of poisoning, the worst and most shameless outrages,
are nnblushingly and pubUcly tolerated in the open
light of heaven. In 1490, the Pope's vicar having
forbidden clerics and laics to keep concubines, the
Pope revoked the decree, " saying that that was not
forbidden, because the life of priests and ecclesiastics
was such that hardly one was to be found who did not
keep a concubine, or at least who had not a courtesan."
Csesar Borgia at the capture of Capua " chose forty of
the most beautiful women, whom he kept for himself;
aad a pretty large number of captives were sold at a
low price at Eoma" Under Alexander VI., " all
ecclesiastics, from the greatest to the least, have concu-
bines in the place of wives, and that publicly. If God
hinder it not," adds the historian, " this corruption will
pass to the monks and reUgious orders, although, to
confess the truth, almost all the monasteries of the
towB have become bawd-houses, without any one to
apeak against it." With respect to Alexander VI.,

' 3«e Corjnit hiMaricomm medii ixvi, Q. Eccard, voL iL ; Jafa.
Bnrchudi, high cluunbtirlMii to Alexander VI,, IHarium, p. 2134.
Onicdardini, IklT Moria Sllalia, p. 211, ed. Panth^OD LitUiaire.

VOL. IL L

146 THE RENAISSANCE. book u.

who loved his daughter Lucretia, the reader may find
in Burchard the description of the marvellous orgies
in which he joined with Lucretia and Caesar, and the
enumeration of the prizes which he distributed. Let
the reader also read for himself the story of the besti-
ality of Pietro Luigi Famese, the Pope's son, how the
young and upright Bishop of Fano died from his outrage,
and how the Pope, speaking of this crime as " a youth-
ful levity," gave him in this secret bull " the fullest
absolution from all the penalties which he might have
incurred by human incontinence, in whatever shape or
with whatever cause." As to civil security, Bentivoglio
caused all the Marescotti to be put to death ; Hippolyto
d'Este had his brother's eyes put out in his presence ;
Caesar Borgia killed his brother ; murder is consonant
with their public manners, and excites no wonder. A
fisherman was asked why he had not informed the
governor of the town that he had seen a body thrown
into the water ; " he replied that he had seen about a
hundred bodies thrown into the water during his life-
time in the same place, and that no one had ever
troubled himself about it." "In our town," says an
old historian, " much murder and pillage was done by
day and night, and hardly a day passed but some one
was killed." Caesar Borgia one day killed Peroso, the
Pope's favourite, between his arms and under his cloak,
so that the blood spurted up to the Pope's face. He
caused his sister's husband to be stabbed and then
strangled in open day, on the steps of the palace;
count, if you can, his assassinations. Certainly he and
his father, by their character, morals, complete, open
and systematic wickedness, have presented to Europe
the two most successfid images of the devil. To

CEAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. H7

sum up in a word, it was on the model of this society,
and for this society, that Machiavelli wrote his Prince.
The complete development of all the faculties and all
the lu3ts of man, the complete destruction of all the
restraints and all the shame of man, are the two dis-
tdnguishing marks of this grand and perverse culture.
To make man a strong being, endowed with genius,
andacity, presence of mind, astute policy, dissimulation,
patience, and to turn all this power to the acquisition
of eveiy kind of pleasure, pleasures of the body, of
luxury, arts, Uteratiue, authority ; that is, to form and
to set free an admirable and fonnidable animal, very
lustful and well armed, — such was his object ; and the
effect, after a hundred years, is visible. They tore
one another to pieces like beautiful lions and superb
panthers. In this society, which was turned into an
arena, amid so many hatreds, and when exhaustion was
setting in, the foreigner appeared : all bent beneath hia
lash; they were caged, and thus they pine away, in
dull pleasures, with low vices, bowing their backs.'
Despotism, the Inquisition, the Cicisbei, dense igno-
rance, and open knavery, the shameleasness and the
smartness of harlequins and rascals, misery and vermin,
— Buch is the issue of the Italian Renaissance. like
the old civilisations of Greece and Rome,' like the
modem civilisations of Provence and Spain, like aU
southern civilisations, it bears in its bosom an irreme-
diable vice, a had and false conception of man. The
Germans of the sixteenth century, like the Germans of

' 8m, in CiMiiova's Mtvwirm, the picture of this degndatioo. See
■lao tlie MtTHoira of ScipioDe Roisi, od the convents of Tnscanf (t the
eloM of tha eighteenth ceator^.

■ From Homer to Conitantine, the ancient city iraa ui »MocJBtion of
fnemcD, whose aim wm the conquest and deatruction of other freemen.

148 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

the fourth century, have rightly judged it ; with their
simple common sense, with their fundamental honesty,
they have put their fingers on the secret plague-spot
A society cannot be founded only on the pursuit of
pleasure and power ; a society can only be founded on
the respect for liberty and justice. In order that the
great himian renovation which in the sixteenth century
raised the whole of Europe might be perfected and
endure, it was necessary that, meeting with another
race, it should develop another culture, and that from
a more wholesome conception of existence it might
educe a better form of civilisation.

Thus, side by side with the Eenaissance, was bom
the Keformation. It also was in fact a new birth, one
in harmony with the genius of the Germanic peoples.
The distinction between this genius and others is its
moral principles. Grosser and heavier, more given to
gluttony and drunkenness,^ these nations are at the same
time more under the influence of conscience, firmer in
the observance of their word, more disposed to self-
denial and sacrifice. Such their climate has made them ;
and such they have continued, from Tacitus to Luther,
from Knox to Gustavus Adolphus and Kant. In the

* Miinoires de la Margrave de BairttUh, See also Misson, Voyage
en Italie, 1700. Compare the manners of the students at the present
day. ** The Germans are, as you know, wonderful drinkers : no people
ill the world are more flattering, more civil, more officious ; but yet
they have terrible customs in the matter of drinking. With them every-
thing is done drinking : they drink in doing everything. There waa
not time during a visit to say three words, before you were astonished
to see the collation arrive, or at least a few jugs of wine, accompanied
by a plate of crusts of bread, dished up with pepper and salt ; a fatal pre-
paration for bad drinkers. Then you must become acquainted ¥dth the

CUP. T. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. U9

course of time, and beneath the inceas&nt action of the
ages, the phlegmatic body, fed on coarse food and strong
drink, had become rusty, the nerves less excitable, the
muscles less strung, the desires less seconded by action,
the life more dull and slow, the soul mora hardened and
indifTerent to the shocks of the body : mud, rain, sqot,
a profosion of unpleasing and gloomy sights, the want
of lively and delicate excitements of the senses, keep
man in a militant attitude. Heroes in the barbarous
ages, workers to-day, they endure weariness now as
they courted wounds then ; now, as then, nobility of
soul appeals to them ; thrown back upon the enjoy-
ments of the soul, they find in these a world, the world
of moral beauty. For them the ideal is displaced ; it
IB no longer amidst forms, made up of force and joy,
but it is transferred to sentiments, made up of truth,
nprightness, attachment to duty, observance of order.
What matters it if the storm rages and if it snows, if
tiie wind blusters in the black pine-forests or on the
wan sea-suTgea where the sea-gulls scream, if a man,
stiff and blue with cold, shuttii^ himself up in his
cottage, have but a dish of sourkrout or a piece of salt
beef, under his smoky light and beside his fire of turf ;
another kingdom opens to reward him, the kingdom of
inward contentment : his wife loves him and is faithful ;
hia children round Ms hearth spell out the old family

lam which are afterward* obterred, tacrad and inTioUbU Uws. Yod
mnit nerer drink without drinking to some one's health ; alao, &f[«r
drinkiDg, yonmnst offer the wine to him whose health yon haredmnk.
Ton moit never refose the glav which is offered to you, and you mast
natonlly dnin it to its Lut di«p. Beflect a little, I heseech yon, on
dine cnatoms, and sae how it u pooible to cease drinking ; accordingly,
they nerer cease. In Oennany it ia ■ perpetnal drinking-bont ; t^ drink
in Goniany is to drink for ever."

150 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Bible ; he is the master in his home, the protector, the
benefactor, honoured by others, honoured by himself ;
and if so be that he needs assistance, he knows that at
the first appeal he will see his neighbours stand faith-
fully and bravely by his side. The reader need only
compare the portraits of the time, those of Italy and
Germany ; he will comprehend at a glance the two
races and the two civilisations, the Benaissance and the
Beformation : on one side a half-naked condottiere in
Boman costimie, a cardinal in his robes, amply draped,
in a rich arm-chair, carved and adorned with heads of
lions, foliage, dancing fauns, he himself full of irony,
and voluptuous, with the shrewd and dangerous look of
a politician and man of the world, craftily poised and
on his guard ; on the other side, some honest doctor, a
theologian, a simple man, with badly combed locks, stiff
as a post, in his simple gown of coarse black serge,
with big books of dogma ponderously clasped, a con-
scientious worker, an exemplary father of a family. See
now the great artist of the age, a laborious and conscien-
tious workman, a follower of Luther's, a true Northman
— Albert Durer.^ He also, like Baphael and Titian, has
his ideal of man, an inexhaustible ideal, whence spring
by hundreds living figures and the representations of
manners, but how national and original ! He cares
not for expansive and happy beauty : to him nude
bodies are but bodies undressed : narrow shoulders,
pit)minent stomachs, thin legs, feet weighed down by
shoes, his neighbour the carpenter's, or his gossip the
sausage-seller's. The heads stand out in his etchings,
remorselessly scraped and scooped away, savage or
commonplace, often wrinkled by the fatigues of trade,

^ See his letters, and the sympathy expressed for Lather.

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIAN SENAIS8AN0E. 151

generally sad, anxious, and patient, harshly and wretch-
edly transformed by the necessities of realistic life.
Where is the vista out of this minute copy of ugly
truth ? To what land will the lofty and melancholy
imagination betake itself ? The land of dreams, strange
dreams swarming with deep thoi^hts, sad contemplation
of human destiny, a vague notion of the great enigma,
groping reflection, which in the dimness of the roi^
woodcuts, amidst obscure emblems and fantastic figures,
tries to seize upon truth and justice. There was no
need to search so far ; Duxer had grasped them at the
first effort If there is any decency in the world, it is
in the Madonnas which are constantly springing to life
under his pencil He did not b^n, like Eaphael, by
mftViTig them nude; the most licentious hand would
not venture to disturb one stiff fold of their robes ; with
an infant in their arms, they think but of him, and
will never think of anybody else but bim ; not only are
they innocent, but they are virtuous. The good German
housewife, for ever shut up, voluntarily and naturally,
wiUiin her domestic duties and contentment, breathes
out in all the fundamental sincerity, the seriousness,
the unassailable loyalty of their attitudes and looks. He
has done more ; with this peaceful virtue he has painted
a militant virtue. There at last is the genuine Christ,
the man crucified, lean and fieshless through his agony,
whose blood trickles minute by minute, in rarer drops,
as the feebler and feebler pulsations give warning of the
last throe of a dying life. We do not find here, as in
the Italian masters a sight to charm the eyes, a mere
flow of drapery, a disposition of groups. The heart,
the very heart is wounded by this sight : it is the just
man oppressed, who is dying because the world hates

152 THE RENAISSANCE. book u.

justice. The mighty, the men of the age, are there,
indiflFerent, full of irony : a plumed knight, a big-bellied
bui^omaster, who, with hands folded behind his back,
looks on, Villfl an hour. But the rest weep ; above the
fainting women, angels full of anguish catch in their
vessels the holy blood as it trickles down, and the stars
of heaven veil their face not to behold so tremendous
an outrage. Other outrages will also be represented ;
tortures manifold, and the true martyrs beside the true
Christ, resigned, silent, with the sweet expression of the
earliest believers. They are bound to an old tree, and
the executioner tears them with his iron pointed lash.
A bishop with clasped hands is praying, lying down,
whilst an auger is being screwed into his eye. Above
amid the interlacing trees and gnarled roots, a band of
men and women, climb imder the lash the breast of a
hill, and they are hurled from the crest at the lance's
point into the abyss ; here and there roll heads, lifeless
bodies ; and by the side of those who are being decapi-
tated, the swollen corpses, impaled, await the croak-
ing ravens. All these sufferings must be undergone for
the confession of faith and the establishment of justice.
But above there is a guardian, an avenger, an all-power-
ful Judge, whose day shall come. This day has come,
and the piercing rays of the last sun already flash,
like a handful of darts, across the darkness of the age.
High up in the heavens appears the angel in his shin-
ing robe, leading the ungovernable horsemen, the flashing
swords, the inevitable arrows of the avengers, who are to
trample upon and punish the earth ; mankind falls down
beneath their charge, and already the jaw of the infer-
nal monster grinds the head of the wicked prelates.
This is the popular poem of conscience, and from the

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSAKOE. 163

days of the apostles, man has not had a more snblime
and complete conception.'

For conscience, like other things, has its poem ; by
a natural invasion the all-powerful idea of justice over-
floTS from the soul, covers heaven, and enthrones there
a new deity. A formidable deity, ^o is scarcely like
the calm intelligence 'which serves philosophers to
explain the order of things ; nor to that tolerant deity,
a kind of constitutional king, whom Voltaire discovered
at the end of a chain of argument, whom B<5ranger
sings of as of a comrade, and whom he salutes " sans
loi demander rien." It is the just Judge, sinless and
stem, who demands of man a strict account of his
visible actions and of all his invisible feelings, who
tolerates no foi^etfnlness, no dejection, no failing, before
whom every approach to weakness or error is an
ontiage and a treason. What is our justice before this
strict justice ? People lived in peace in the times of
ignorance ; at most, when they felt themselves guilty,
they went for absolution to a priest ; all was ended by
their buying a tag indulgence; there was a tariff, aa
there stiU is; Tetzel the Dominican declares that all
sins are blotted out " as soon as the money chinks in
the box." Whatever be the crime, there is a quit*
tance; even "si Dei matrem violavisset," he might go
home clean and sure of heaven. Unfortunately the
vendors of pardons did not know that all was changed,
and tiiat the intellect was become manly, no longer gab-
bling words mechanically like a catechism, but probing
them anxiously like a truth. In the universal Renais-
sance, and in tJie mighty growth of all human ideas,

' 8m ft collectioii of Albert Darer'E wood-c&rrings. Remark the
iCMmbknM of hia Apoealyft to Lnther'B Tah!a Talk.

154 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

the Gennan idea of duty blooms like the rest. Now,
when we speak of justice, it is no longer a lifeless
phrase which we repeat, but a living idea which we
produce ; man sees the object which it represents, and
feels the emotion which summons it up ; he no longer
receives, but he creates it; it is his work and his
tyrant ; he makes it, and submits to it " These words
jiistvs and justitia Dei," says Luther, " were a thunder
to my conscience. I shuddered to hear them ; I told
myself, if God is just. He will punish me." ^ For as
soon as the conscience discovers again the idea of the
perfect model, ^ the smallest failings appeared to be
crimes, and man, condemned by his own scruples, fell
prostrate, and, " as it were, swallowed up " with horror.
" I, who lived the life of a spotless monk," says Luther,
" yet felt within me the troubled conscience of a sinner,
without managing to assure myself as to the satisfaction

^ Calvin, the logician of the Refonnation, well explains the depend-
ence of all the Protestant ideas in his Institutes of Uu Christian Bdigion,
i. (1.) The idea of the perfect God, the stem Judge. (2.) The alann
of conscience. (S.) The impotence and corruption of nature. (4.) The
advent of free grace. (5.) The rejection of rites and ceremonies.

' '* In the measure in which pride is rooted within us, it always
appears to us as though we w^ere just and whole, good and holy ; nnless
we are convinced by manifest arguments of our injustice, uncleanness,
folly, and impurity. For we are not convinced of it if we turn our eyes
to our own persons merely, and if we do not think also of God, who is
the only rule by which we must shape and regulate this judgment.
. . . And then that which had a fair appearance of virtue will be found
to be nothing but weakness.

** This 18 the source of that horror and wonder by which the Scriptures
tell us the saints were afflicted and cast down, when and as often as they
felt the presence of God. For we see those who were as it might be far
from God, and who were confident and went about with head erect, as
soon as He displayed His glory to them, they were shaken and terrified,
so much so that they were overwhelmed, nay swaUowed up in the horror
of death, and that they fainted away." — Calvin's Institutes, L

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 155

which I owed to God. . . . Then I said to myself:
Am I then the only one who ought to be sad in my
spirit? . . . Oh, what horrible spectres and figures I
used to see ! " Thus alarmed, conscience believes that
the terrible day is at hand. " The end of the world is
near. . . . Our children will see it; perchance we
ourselyes." Once in this mood he had terrible dreams
for six months at a time. Like the Christians of the
Apocalypse, he fixes the momicnt when the world will
be destroyed: it will come at Easter, or at the
conversion of Scdnt PauL One theologian, his friend,
thought of giving aU his goods to the poor; "but
would they receive it ? " he said. " To-morrow night
we shall be seated in heaven." Under such anguish
the body gives way. For fourteen days Luther was in
such a condition, that he could neither drink, eat, nor
sleep. " Day and night," his eyes fixed on a text of
Saint Paul, he saw the Judge, and His inevitable hand.
Such is the tragedy which is enacted in all Protestant
souls — ^the eternal tragedy of conscience ; and its issue
is a new religion.

For nature alone and unassisted cannot rise from
this abyss. " By itself it is so corrupted, that it does
not feel the desire for heavenly things. . . . There is
in it before God nothing but lust" Good intentions
cannot spring fix)m it. "For, terrified by the vision
of his sin, man could not resolve to do good, troubled
and anxious as he is; on the contrary, dejected and
crushed by the weight of his sin, he falls into despair
and hatred of God, as it was with Cain, Saul, Judas ;"
80 that, abandoned to himself, he can find nothing
within him but the rage and the dejection of a despair-
ing wretch or a deviL In vain he might try to redeem

156 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

himself by good works : our good deeds are not pure ;
even though pure, they do not wipe out the stain of
previous sins, and moreover they do not take away
the original corruption of the heart ; they are only
boughs and blossoms, the inherited poison is in the sap.
Man must descend to the heart, underneath literal
obedience and legal rule ; from the kingdom of law he
must penetrate into that of grace ; from forced righte-
ousness to spontaneous generosity; beneath his origi-
nal nature, which led him to selfishness and earthly
things, a second nature must be developed, leading
him to sacrifice and heavenly thinga Neither my
works, nor my justice, nor the works or justice of any
creature or erf aU creatures, could work in me this
wonderful change. One alone can do it, the pure God,
the J\ist Victim, the Saviour, the Eedeemer, Jesus, my
Christ, by imputing to me His justice, by pouring upon
me His merits, by drowning my sin under His sacrifica
The world is a "mass of perdition,"^ predestined to
helL Lord Jesus, draw me back, select me from this
mass. I have no claim to it ; there is nothing in me
that is not abominable; this very prayer is inspired
and formed within me by Thee. But I weep, and my
breast heaves, and my heart is broken. Lord, let me
feel myself redeemed, pardoned, Thy elect one. Thy
faithful one ; give me grace, and give me faith !
" Then," says Luther, " I felt myself bom anew, and it
seemed that I was entering the open gates of heaven."
What remains to be done after this renovation of the
heart ? Nothing : aU religion is in that : the rest must
be reduced or suppressed; it is a personal affair, an
inward dialogue between God and man, where there are

^ Saint Aogostine.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 167

only two things at work, — the very word of God as it
is transmitted by Scripture, and the emotions of the
heart of man, as the word of God excites and maintains
them.^ Let us do away with the rites that appeal to
the senses, wherewith men wished to replace this inter-
course between the invisible soul and the visible
judge, — mortifications, fasts, corporeal penance. Lent,
vows of chastity and poverty, rosaries, indulgences;
rites serve only to smother living piety imdemeath*
mechanical works. Away with the mediators by which
men have attempted to impede the direct intercourse
between God and man, — namely, saints, the Virgin, the
Pope, the priest ; whosoever adores or obeys them is an
idolater. Neither saints nor Virgin can convert or save
us; God alone by His Christ can convert and save.
Neither Pope nor priest can fix our faith or forgive our
sins ; God alone instructs us by His word, and absolves
us by His pardon. No more pilgrimages or relics ; no
more traditions or auricular confessions. A new church
appears, and therewith a new worship; ministers of
religion change their tone, the worship of God its form ;
the authority of the clergy is diminished, and the pomp
of services is reduced : they are reduced and diminished
the more, because the primitive idea of the new

* Melancthon, preface to Luther' a Works : " It is clear that the
works of Thomas, Scotus, and the like, are utterly silent about the
element of justification by faith, and contain many errors concerning the
most important questions relating to the church. It is clear that the
discourses of the monks in their churches almost throughout the world
w«re either fables about purgatory and the saints or else some kind of
dogma of law or discipline, without a word of the gospel concerning
Christ, or else were rain trifles about distinctions in the matter of food,
about feasts, and other human traditions. . . . The gospel is pure,
incorruptible, and not diluted with Gentile opinions." See also Fox,
Ads amd Monuments^ 8 toIs., ed. Townsend, 1848, ii. 42.

158 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

theology is more absorbing ; so much so, that in certain
sects they have disappeared altogether. The priest
descends from the lofty position in which the right of
foigiving sins and of regulating faith had raised him
over the heads of the laity ; he returns to civil society,
marries like the rest, aims to be once more an equal, is
merely a more gleamed and pious man than others,
chosen by themselves and their adviser. The church
becomes a temple, void of images, decorations, ceremonies
sometimes altogether bare; a simple meeting-house,
where, between whitewashed waUs, from a plain pulpit,
a man in a black gown speaks without gesticulations,
reads a passage from the Bible, begins a hymn, which
the congregation takes up. There is another place of
prayer, as Uttle adorned and not less venerated, the
domestic hearth, where every night the father of the
family, before his servants and his children, prays aloud
and reads the Scriptures. An austere and free religion,
pui^ged from sensuaUsm and obedience, inward and
personal, which, set on foot by the awakening of the
conscience, could only be established among races in
which each man found within his nature the conviction
that he alone is responsible for his actions, and always
boimd to the observance of his duty.

III.

It must be admitted that the Eeformation entered
England by a side door ; but it is enough that it came
in, whatever the manner : for great revolutions are not
introduced by court intrigues and official cleverness, but
by social conditions and popular instincts. When five
millions of men are converted, it is because five millions

ri

OHAP. T. THE CHfilSTIAN RENAISSAKCE. 169

of men wish to be converted. Let ub therefore leave
on one aide the intrigues in high places, the scruplea
and passions of Henry VIII.,' the pliability and
plaofiibility of Cranmer, the vacillations and basenesses
of Parliament, the oscillatiou and tardiness of the
Beformation, b^>m, then arrested, then pushed forward,
tiien suddenly, violently pushed back, then spread over
the whole nation, and hedged in by a legal establish-
ment, built up from discordant materials, but yet solid
and durable. Every great change has its root in the
soul, and we have only to look close into this deep soil
to discover the national inclinations and the secular
irritations from which Protestantism has issued.

A hundred and fifty years before, it liad been on the
point of bursting forth; Wycliff had appeared, the
Lollards had sprung up, the Bible had been translated ;
the Commons had proposed the confiscation of all ecclesi-
astical property ; then mider the pressure of the Church,
royalty and aristocracy combined, the growing Reforma-
tion being crushed, disappeared underground, only to
reappear at distant intervals by the sufferings of its
martyrs. The bishops bad received the right of imprison-
ii^ without trial laymen suspected of heresy ; they had
burned Lord Cobham aHve; the kings chose their
ministers from the episcopal bench ; settled in authority
and pomp, they had made the nobility and people bend
onder the secular sword which bad been entrusted to
them, and iu their hands the stem network of law, which
from the Conquest had compressed the nation in its iron
meshes, had become still more stringent and more oSen-
sive. Venial acts had been construed into crimes, and the

' St» Fronde, Eiitory of Englaitd, L-tl The coDduot of Henry
Tin. U then presented in « new light

160 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

judicial repression, extended to sins as well as to crimes,
had changed the police into an inquisition. '' * Offences
against chastity/ 'heresy/ or 'matter sounding there-
unto/ 'witchcraft/ 'drunkenness/ 'scjuidal/ 'defa-
mation/ ' impatient words/ ' broken promises/ * un-
truth/ ' absence from church/ ' speaking evil of saints/
'nonpayment of offerings/ 'complaints against the
constitutions of the courts themselves ;' " ^ aU these
transgressions, imputed or suspected, brought folk before
the ecclesiastical tribunals, at enormous expense, with
long delays, from great distances, imder a captious
procedure, resulting in heavy fines, strict imprisonments,
humiliating abjurations, public penances, and the
menace, often fulfilled, of torture and the stake. Judge
from a single fact ; the Earl of Surrey, a relative of the
king, was accused before one of these tribunals of
having neglected a fast Imagine, if you can, the
minute and incessant oppressiveness of such a code ; how
far the whole of human life, visible actions and invisible
thoughts, was surroimded and held down by it ; how
by enforced accusations it penetrated to every hearth
and into every conscience ; with what shamelessness it
was transformed into a vehicle for extortions; what
secret anger it excited in these townsfolk, these peasants,
obliged sometimes to travel sixty miles and back to
leave in one or other of the numberless talons of the
law ^ a part of their savings, sometimes their whole sub-
stance and that of their children. A man b^ins to
think when he is thus down-trodden ; he asks himself
quietly if it is really by divine dispensation that mitred

^ Froude, L 191. Petition of Commons. This public and aathentic
protest shows up all the details of clerical organisation and oppression.
> Froude, L 26 ; ii 192.

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. - 161

thieves thus practise tyranny and pillage ; be looks
more closely into their lives ; he wants to know if they
themselves practise the r^ularity which they impose
on othera ; and on a sudden he learns strange things.
Cardinal Wolsey writes to the Pope, that "both the
seculai and r^ular priests were in the habit of commit-
ting atrocious crimes,forwbich,if not inorders, they would
have been promptly executed ; ' and the laity were
Bcandalised to see such persons not only not d^raded,
but escaping with complete impunity." A priest con-
victed of incest with the prioress of Kilboum was simply
condemned to cany a cross in a procession, and to pay
three shillings and fourpence ; at which rate, I fancy,
he would renew the practice. In the preceding reign
(Henry VII.) the gentlemen and farmers of Carnarvon-
shire had laid a complaint accusing the clergy of
systematically seducing their wives and daughters.
There were brothels in London for the especial use of
priests. As to the abuse of the confessional, read in
the original the familiarities to which it opened the
door,* The bishops gave livings to their children whilst
they were still young. The holy Father Prior of
Maiden Bradley hath but six children, and but one
dan^ter married yet of the goods of the monasteiy ;
truatii^ shortly to marry the rest. In the convents
the monks used to drink after supper till ten or twelve
next morning, and came to matins drunk. They played
cards or dice. Some came to service in the afternoons,
and only then for fear of corporal punishments. The
royal "visitors" found concubines in the secret apart-

> In Uay 1S28. Fronde, I IS 4.

* Hal^ Criminal Cbuwf. Sapprtaiim of Vie Monaattria, Camden
Sac PnUicatioiu. Fronde, i. 194-201.

TOU n. M

Ui THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

intuits of the abbots. At the nimneiy of Sion, the con-
foHMors seduced the duds aDd absolved them at the same
time. There were coDveDts, Burnet tells us, where all
the recluses were fouud pregnaDt About " two-thirds"
of the Euglish mouks lived in such sort, that " when
tlieir euonuities were first read in the Parliament House,
there was no tiling but ' down with them !' "^ What a
spectacle for a nation iD whom reasoD and conscience
were awakening ! Long before the great outburst, public
wrath muttered ominously, and was accumulating for a
revolt ; priests were yelled at in the streets or " thrown
into the kennel ;" women would not " receive the sacra-
ment from hands which they thought polluted."^ When
the apparitor of the ecclesiastical courts came to serve
a process, he was driven away with insults. " Go thy
way thou stynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and
brybours everych one of yoiu" A mercer broke an
apparitor's head with his yard. " A waiter at the sign
of the Cock " said " that the sight of a priest did make
him sick, and that he would go sixty miles to indict a
priest" Bishop Fitz-James wrote to Wolsey, that the
juries in London were " so maliciously set m favarem
Juvrdicft pra vital is, that they will cast and condenm any
clerk, though he were as innocent as AbeL" ^ Wolsey
himself spoke to the Pope of the "dangerous spirit"
which was spread abroad among the people, and
planned a liefonnation. "WHien Henry VIIL laid the
axe to the tree, and slowly, with mistrust, struck a blow,
then a second lopping off the branches, there were a

* liiitimor's .SVr ;/}/>«,'?.

^ They ottl led tlnnn **horsijnpresU3f" **horsonf'' or** tchorwn knaves.*'
Halo, p. 99 ; quoUnl hy Froude, L 199.
» Froude, l 101 (1514).

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 163

thousand, nay, a hundred thousand hearts which
approved of it, and would themselves have struck the
trunk.

Consider the internal state of a diocese, that of Lincoln
for instance,^ at this period, about 1521, and judge by
this example of the manner in which the ecclesiastical
machinery works throughout the whole of England,
multiplying martyrs, hatreds, and conversions. Bishop
Longland summons the relatives of the accused, brothers,
women and children, and administers the oath ; as they
have already been prosecuted and have abjured, they
must make oath, or they are relapsed, and the fagots
await them. Then they denounce their kinsman and
themselves. One has taught the other in English the
Epistle of Saint James. This man, having forgotten
several words of the Fater and Credo in Latin, can only
repeat them in English. A woman turned her face
from the cross which was carried about on Easter morning.
Several at church, especially at the moment of the
elevation, would not say their prayers, and remained
seated "dumb as beasts." Three men, including a
carpenter, passed a night together reading a book of
the Scriptures. A pregnant woman went to mass not
fasting. A brazier denied the Real Presence. A brick-
maker kept the Apocalypse in his possession. A
thresher said, as he pointed to his work, that he
was going to make God come out of his straw. Others
spoke lightly of pilgrimage, or of the Pope, or of relics,
or of confession. And then fifty of them were con-
demned the same year to abjure, to promise to denoimce
each other, and to do penance all their lives, on pain
of being burnt, as relapsed heretics. They were shut

^ Fox, Acts and Jdonuments, iv. 221.

164 THE RENAISSAI^CR book n.

up in different " monasteries ; " there they were to be
maintained by alms, and to work for their support;
they were to appear with a fagot on their shoulders at
market, and in the procession on Sunday. Then in a
general procession, then at the punishment of a heretic;
" they were to fast on bread and ale only every Friday
during their life, and every even of Corpus Christy on
bread and water, and carry a visible mark on their cheek."
Beyond that, six were burnt alive, and the children of
one, John Scrivener, were obliged themselves to set
fire to their father's wood pile. Do you think that a
man, burnt or shut up, was altogether done with ?
He is silenced, I admit, or he is hidden; but long
memories and bitter resentments endure under a forced
silence. People saw^ their companion, relation, brother,
boimd by an iron chain, with clasped hands, praying
amid the smoke, whilst the flame blackened his skin
and destroyed his flesh. Such sights are not forgotten ;
the last words uttered on the fagot, the last appeals to
God and Christ, remain in their hearts all-powerful
and ineffaceable. They carry them about with them, and
silently ponder over them in the fields, at their labour,
when they think themselves alone ; and then, darkly,
passionately, their brains work. For, beyond this uni-
versal sympathy wliich gathers mankind about the
oppressed, there is the working of the religious senti-
ment The crisis of conscience has begim which is
natural to this race ; they meditate on their salvation,
they are alarmed at their condition : terrified at the
judgments of God, they ask themselves whether, living

^ See, passim^ the prints of Fox. All the details which follow are
from biographies. See those of Cromwell, by Carlyle, of Fox the
Quaker, of Bunyan, and the trials reported at length by Fox.

r\

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 165

under imposed obedience and ceremonies, they do not
become culpable, and merit damuatioo. Can this terror
be stifled by prisons and torture 7 Fear against fear, the
only question is, which is the strongest ! They will soon
know it : for the peculiarity of these inward amcieties
is that they grow beneath consti»int and oppression ;
as a welling spring which we vaiuly try to stamp oat
onder stones, they bubble and leap up and swell, until
their surplus overflows, disjointing or bursting asunder
the r^ular masonry under which men endeavoured to
bury them. In the solitude of the fields, or during
the long winter nights, men dream ; soon they fear, and
become gloomy. On Sunday at church, obliged to
cross themselves, to kneel before the cross, to receive
the host, they shudder, and think it a mortal sin.
They cease to talk to their Mends, remain for hours
with bowed heads, sorrowful ; at night their wives hear
them sigh ; unable to sleep they rise from their beds.
Picture such a wan face, full of anguish, nourishing
under its sternness and calmness a secret ardour : it is
still to be found in England in the poor shabby
dissenter, who, Sible in hand, stands up suddenly to
preach at a street corner ; in those long-faced men who,
after the service, not having had enough of prayers, sing a
hymn in the street. The sombre imagination has started,
like a woman in labour, and its conception swells day
by day, tearing him who contains it. Through the
long muddy winter, the howling of the wind sighii^
among the ill-fitting rafters, the melancholy of the
sky, continually flooded with rain or covered with
clouds, add to the gloom of the lugubrious dream.
Thenceforth man has made up his mind ; he will be
saved at all costs. At the peril of bis life, he obtains
one of tiie hooka which teach the way of salvation.

166 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

WyoliflTs Wicket Gate, The Obedience of a Christian, or
aimietimes Luther's Revelation of Antichrist, but above
all some portion of the word of God, which Tyndale
had just translated. One man hid his books in a
hollow tree ; another learned by heart an epistle or a
gospel, so as to be able to ponder it to himself even in
the presence of his accusers. When sure of his neighbour,
he speaks with him in private ; and peasant talking to
peasant, labourer to labourer — you know what the
effect will be. It was the yeomen's sons, as Latimer
said, who more than all others maintained the faith of
Christ in England ; ^ and it was with the yeomen's
sons that Cromwell afterwards reaped his Puritan
victories. When such words are whispered through a
nation, all official voices clamour in vain : the nation
has found its poem, it stops its ears to the troublesome
would-be distractors, and presently sings it out with a
full voice and from a full heart

But the contagion had even reached the men in
office, and Henry VIII. at last permitted the English
Bible to be published. ^ England had her book.
Every one, says Strype, who could buy this book either
read it assiduously, or had it read to him by others,
and many well advanced in years learned to read with
the same object. On Sunday the poor folk gathered
at the ])ottom of the churches to hear it read. Maldon,
a young man, afterwards related that he had clubbed
his savings with an apprentice to buy a New Testament,
and that for fear of his father, they had hidden it in
their straw mattress. In vain the king in his pro-

* Froude, ii. 83 : " The bishops said in 1529, * In the crime of heresy *
thanked be God, there hath no notable person fallen in our time. ' "
^ In 1586. Strype*8 Memorials, appendix. Froude, iiL ch. 12.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 167

clamation had ordered ^ople not to rest too much
upon their own senae, ideaa, or opinions ; not to reason
puhlicly about it in the public taverns and alehouses,
but to have recourse to learned and authorised men ;
the seed sprouted, and they chose rather to take God's
word in the matter than men's. Maldon declared to
his mother that he would not kneel to the crucifix
any longer, and his father in a r^e beat him severely,
and was ready to hang him. The preface itself invited
men to independent study, saying that " the Bishop of
Borne has studied long to keep the Bible from the
people, and specially from princes, lest they should find
out his tricks and his falsehoods ; . . . knowing well
enough, that if the clear sun of God's word came over
the heat of the day, it would drive away the foul mist
of his devilish doctrines." ^ Even on the admission,
then, of official voices, they had there the pure and the
whole truth, not merely speculative but moral truth,
without wMch we cannot live worthily or be saved.
Tyndale, the translator, says :

" The right waye (yea and the onely waje) to understand the
Scriptare unto salvatioD, is that we emestlye and above all
thynge Berche for the profession of our baptisme or covenauntes
made betwene God and ub. As for an example. Christe saytb,
Mat. v., Happy are the mercyfiill, for they shall obtayne mercye.
Lo, here Ood hath made a coveuaunt vyth us, to be mercyfull
unto U8, yf we wyli be mercyfull one to another."

What an expression ! and with what ardour men
pricked by the ceaseless reproaches of a scrupulous
conscience, and the presentiment of the dark future,
will devote on these pages the whole attention of eyes
and heart!

1 CoTerdale. Fronde, iii. 31.

168 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

I have before me one of these great old folios/ in
black letter, in which the pages, worn by homy fingers
have been patched together, in which an old engraving
figures forth to the poor folk the deeds and menaces of
the God of Israel, in which the preface and table of
contents point out to simple people the moral which is
to be dra\^'n from each tragic history, and the applica-
tion wliich is to be made of each venerable precept.
Hence have sprung much of the English language, and
half of the English manners ; to this day the country is
bibliwd ; ' it was these big books which had transformed
Shaksi>eare's England. To understand this great change,
try to picture these yeomen, these shopkeepers, who in
the evening placed this Bible on their table, and bare-
headed, with veneration, heard or read one of its chap-
ters. Think that they have no other books, that theirs
was a virgin mind, that every impression would make
a furrow, that the monotony of mechanical existence
rendered them entirely open to new emotions, that they
opened this book not for amusement, but to discover
in it their doom of life and death ; in brief, that the
sombre and impassioned imagination of the race raised
them to the level of the grandeurs and terrors which
were to pass before their eyes. Tyndale, the translator,
'\^Tote with such sentiments, condemned, himted, in
concealment, his mind full of the idea of a speedy
death, and of the great God for whom at last he
mounted the funeral p}Te ; and the spectators who had
seen the remorse of Macbeth^ and the murders of

^ 1549. Tyndalo's translation.

* An expression of Stendhal's ; it was his general impression.

• The time of wliiuh M. Taiue speaks, and the translation of Tyndale
precede by at least fifty years the appearance of Macbeth (1606). Shak-
speare's audience read the present authorised translation. — Ta.

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 169

Shakapeare can listen to the despair of David, and the
massacres accumulated in the books of Judges and Kings.
The short Hebrew verae-style took bold upon them by
its UDCTiltdvat«d austerity. They have no need, like the
French, to have the ideas developed, explained in fine
clear language, to be modified and connected.* The
serious and pulsating tone shakes tbem at once ; they
understand it with the imagination and the heart ; they
are not, like Frenchmen, enslaved to logical regularity ;
and the old text, so free, so lofty and terrible, can retain
in their language its wildness and its majesty. More
than any people in Europe, by their inner conceutra-
tion and rigidity, they realise the Semitic conception of
the solitary and almighty God ; a strange conception,
which we, with all our critical methods, have hardly
reconstructed within ourselves at the present day. For
the Jew, for the powerful minds who wrote the Penta-
teuch,* for the prophets and authors of the Psalms, life
as we conceive it, was secluded from living things,
plants, animals, finnament, sensible objects, to be carried
and concentrated entirely in the one Being of whom
they are the work and the puppets. Earth is the foot-
stool of this great God, lieaven is His garment. He is
in the world, amongst His creatures, as an Oriental king
in his tent, amidst his arms and his carpets. If you
enter this tent, all vanishes before the absorbing idea of
the master ; you see but Iijth ; nothing has an individ-
oal and independent existence : these arms are but
made for his hands, these carpets for his foot ; you im-
agine tbem only as spread for him and trodden by him.

' 8m Lemaistre de Sacy'a Frencli translation of the Bible, so slightly
biblicaL

» See Eirald, OaehiAU da VoOCi Irratt, his apostrophe to the third
writer of the Pentateuch, Erhabmer QtM, etc

170 THE RENAISSAI^CK book n.

The awe-inspiring face and the menacing voice of the
irresistible lord appear behind his instruments. And
in a similar manner, for the Jew, nature and men are
nothing of themselves ; they are for the service of Grod ;
they have no other reason for existence ; no other use ;
they vanish before the vast and solitary Being who
extended and set high as a mountain before human
thought, occupies and covers in Himself the whole
horizon. Vainly we attempt, we seed of the Aryan
race, to represent to ourselves this devouring God ; we
always leave some beauty, some interest, some part of
free existence to nature; we but half attain to the
Creator, with difficulty, after a chain of reasoning, like
Voltaire and Kant; more readily we make Him into
an architect ; we naturally believe in natural laws ; we
know that the order of the world is fixed ; we do not
crush tilings and their relations under the burden of
an arbitrary sovereignty ; we do not grasp the sublime
sentiment of Job, who sees the world trembling and
swallowed up at the touch of the strong hand ; we can-
not endure the intense emotion or repeat the marvellous
accent of the psalms, in which, amid the silence of beings
reduced to atoms, nothing remains but the heart of man
speaking to the eternal Lord. These Englishmen, in
the anguish of a troubled conscience, and the oblivion
of sensible nature, renew it in part. If the strong and
harsh cheer of the Arab, which breaks forth like the
blast of a trumpet at the sight of the rising sun and of
the bare solitudes, ^ if the mental trances, the short
visions of a luminous and grand landscape, if the Semitic
colouring are wanting, at least the seriousness and

^ See Ps. civ. in Luther's admirable translation and in the English
translation.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 171

simplicity have remained ; and the Hebraic God brought
into the modem conscience, is no less a sovereign in
this narrow precinct than in the deserts and mountains
from which He sprang. His image is reduced, but His
authority is entire ; if He is less poetical, He is more
moral Men read with awe and trembling the history
of His Works, the tables of His law, the archives of
His vengeance, the proclamation of His promises and
menaces; they are filled with them. Never has a
people been seen so deeply imbued by a foreign book,
has let it penetrate so far into its manners and writ-
ings, its imagination and language. Thenceforth they
have found their King, and will follow Him ; no word,
lay or ecclesiastic, shall prevail over His word ; they
have submitted their conduct to Him, they will give
body and life for Him; and if need be, a day will
come when, out of fidelity to Him, they will overthrow
the Stata

It is not enough to hear this King, they must answer
Him ; and religion is not complete until the prayer of
the people is added to the revelation of God. In 1548,
at last, England received her prayer-book^ from the
hands of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, Bernard Ochin, Me-
lanchthon ; the chief and most ardent reformers of
Europe were invited to compose a body of doctrines
conformable to Scripture, and to express a body of
sentiments conformable to the true Christian faith. This
prayer-book is an admirable book, in which the full
spirit of the Reformation breathes out, where, beside
the moving tenderness of the gospel, and the manly

1 The first Priniep of note was in 1545 ; Froude, v. 141. The
Prayer-book underwent seyeral changes in 1552, others under Elizabeth,
and a few, laaily, at the Restoration.

172 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

accents of the Bible, throb the profoimd emotion, the
grave eloquence, the noble-mindedness, the restrained
enthusiasm of the heroic and poetic souls who had
re-discovered Christianitv, and had passed near the fire
of martyrdouL

" Almighty and most merciful Father ; We have erred, and
strayed from Thy waja like lost sheep. We have followed too
much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have
offended against Thy holy laws. We have left midone those
things which we ought to have done ; And we have done those
things which we ought not to have done ; And there is no health
in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable
offenders. Spare Thou them, O God, which confess their faults.
Restore Thou them that are penitent ; According to Thy promises
declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our LonL And grant,
most merciful Father, for His sake ; That we may hereafter
live a godly, righteous, and sober life."

** Almighty and everlasting Crod, who hatest nothing that
Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins 'of all them that are
penitent ; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that
we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretched-
ness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all merey, perfect remission
and forgiveness."

Tlie same idea of sin, repentance, and moral renova-
tion continually recurs ; the master-thought is always
tliat of the heart humbled before invisible justice, and
only imploring His grace in order to obtain His relief.
Such a state of mind ennobles man, and introduces a
sort of impassioned gravity in all the important actions
of his life. Listen to the liturgy of the deathbed, of
baptism, of marriage ; the latter first :

" Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live
together after Grod's ordinance, in the holy state of Matrimony f

CHAP. V. THE CHEISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 173

Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness
and in health ; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her,
80 long as ye both shall live V*

These are gemiine, honest, and conscientious words.
No mystic languor, here or elsewhere. This religion is
not made for women who dream, yearn, and sigh, but
for men who examine themselves, act and have confi-
dence, confidence in some one more just than themselves.
When a man is sick, and his flesh is weak, the priest
comes to him, and says :

" Dearly beloved, know this, that Almighty God is the Lord
of life and death, and of all things to them pertaining, as youth
strength, health, age, weakness, and sickness. Wherefore, what-
soever your sickness is, know you certainly, that it is God*s visita-
tion. And for what cause soever this sickness is sent unto you ;
whether it be to try your patience for the example of others, . . .
or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatso-
ever doth offend the eyes of your heavenly Father ; know you
certainly, that if you truly repent you of your sins, and bear your
sickness patiently, trusting in God*s mercy, . . . submitting
yourself wholly unto His will, it shall turn to your profit, and
help you forward in the right way that leadeth unto everlasting
life."

A great mysterious sentiment, a sort of sublime epic,
void of images, shows darkly amid these probings of
the conscience ; I mean a glimpse of the divine govern-
ment and of the invisible world, the only existences,
the only realities, in spite of bodily appearances and
of the brute chance, which seems to jumble all things
together. Man sees this beyond at distant intervals,
and raises himself out of his mire, as though he had
suddenly breathed a pure and strengthening atmosphere.
Such are the effects of public prayer restored to the

174 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

people; for this had been taken from the Latin and
rendered into the vulgar tongue : there is a revolution
in this very word. Doubtless routine, here as with the
ancient missal, will gradually do its sad work ; by re-
peating the same words, man will often do nothing but
repeat words; his lips will move whilst his heart
remains inert But in great anguish, in the confused
agitations of a restless and hollow mind, at the funerals
of his relatives, the strong words of the book will find
him in a mood to feel ; for they are living,^ and do not
stay in the ears like those of a dead language ; they
enter the soul ; and as soon as the soul is stirred and
worked upon, they take root there. If you go and hear
these words in England itself, and if you listen to the
deep and pulsating accent with which they are pro-
nounced, you will see that they constitute there a
national poem, always imderstood and always efficacious.
On Sunday, when all business and pleasure is sus-
pended, between the bare walls of the village church,
where no image, no ex-^oto, no accessory worship
distracts the eyes, the seats are fidl; the powerful
Hebraic verses knock like the strokes of a battering-
ram at the door of every soul ; then the liturgy unfolds
its imposing supplications ; and at intervals the song
of tlie congregation, combined with the organ, sustains

* " To make use of words in a foreign language, merely with a senti-
ment of devotion, the mind taking no fniit, could be neither pleasing
to God, nor beneficial to man. The party that understood not the pith
or effectualness of the talk that he made with God, might be as a harp
or pipe, having a sound, but not understanding the noise that itself
had made ; a Christian man was more than an instrument ; and he had
therefore provided a determinate form of supplication in tlie English
tongue, tliat his subjects miglit be able to pray like reasonable beings
in their own language." — Letter of JIairy Fill, to Cranmer, Froude,
iv. 486.

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTUN RENAISSANCE. 175

the people's devotion. There ia nothing graver and
more simple than this singing hj the people ; no scales,
no elaborate melody ; it is not calculated for the gratifi-
cation of the ear, and yet it is free from the sickly sad-
ness, &om the ^oomy monotony which the middle-age
has left in the chanting in Roman Catholic churches ;
neither monkish nor pagan, it rolls like a manly yet
Bweet melody, neither contrasting with nor obscuring the
words which accompany it ; these words are psalms trans-
lated into verse, yet lofty ; diluted, but not embellished.
Everything harmonises — place, music, text, ceremony —
to place every man, personally and without a mediator,
in presence of a just Qod, and to form a moral poetry
which shall sustain and develop the moral sense.'

* 'BuhofiohaTiBbeft Funeral Oration 0/ the Countas of Siehtnimd
(cd. 1711) ahowa to nbat practices this religion niccerded. The
ComiteM ma the mother of Heniy VII., nod translated the Mymmre
q^ Oolde, and The FotOu Bake of Oie Follmoinge Jena Chryst :—

" &a for faatfnge, for age, and feebleness, aJbeit she were Dot bound
yet thoae days that by the Church were appointed, she kept tliem dili-
gently and serionaly, and in especial the holj Lent, throughout that she
restrained her appetite till one meal of fish on the day ; besidea her
ether pecaliar taats of devotion, as St. Anthony, St. Mary Magdalene,
St. Catherine, with other ; and throughout all the year the Friday and
BatDtday she full truly observed. As to hard clothes wearing, glie
had her shirts uid girdles of hair, which, when alic was in health, every
weelc she failed not certain days to wear, sometime the one, sometime the
other, that full often her skin, as I heard say, was pierced therevrith.

"In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not
long after five of the clock, she began certain devotions, and so aiter
thent, with one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our Lady ; which
kept her to then, ahe came into her closet, where then with lier chap-
lain ihe aaid also matins of the day ; and after that, daily heard four or
fire masses npon her knees ; so continuing in her prayera and devotions
onto the hour of dinner, which of the esting day was ten of the clocks,
and vpon the festing day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go
her slatloiu to three altars doily ; daily her dirges and commenda-
tiona she would say, and her even songa before supper, both of the day

176 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

One detail is still needed to complete this manly reli-
gion — ^human reason. The minister ascends the pulpit
and speaks : he speaks coldly, I admit, with literary
conmients and over-long demonstrations; but solidly,
seriously, like a man who desires to con^^ince, and that
by honest means, who addresses only the reason, and
discourses only of justice. With Latimer and his con-
temporaries, preaching, like religion, changes its object
and character; like religion, it becomes popidar and
moral, and appropriate to those who hear it, to recall
them to their duties. Few men have deserved better
of their fellows, in life and word, than he. He was a
genuine Englishman, conscientious, courageous, a man
of common sense and practical, sprung from the labour-
ing and independent class, the very heart and sinews
of the nation. His father, a brave yeoman, had a farm
of about four pounds a year, on which he employed half
a dozen men, with thirty cows which his wife milked,
a good soldier of the king, keeping equipment for him-
self and his horse so as to join the army if need were,

and of our Lady, beside many other prayers and psalters of David
throughout the year ; and at night before she went to bed, she failed
not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an hour to
occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneel-
ing was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her
back pain and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily, when she was in
health, she failed not to say the crown of our lady, which, after the
manner of Rome, containeth sixty and three aves, and at every ave, to
make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books in French,
wherewith she would occupy herself when she was weary of prayer.
Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into ^glish.
Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here before have
heard her confession, which be divers and many, and at many seasons in
the year, lightly every third day. Can also record the same those that were
present at any time when she was houshylde, which was fuU nigh a dozen
times every year, what floods of tears there issued forth of her eyes I "

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIifr RENAISSANCE. 177

trainii^ Iiis son to use the bow, m&kii^ him. buckle on
his breastplate, and finding a few nobles at the bottom
of his purse wherewith to send him to school, and thence
to the university.' Little Latimer studied eagerly, took
his d^rees, and continued long a good Catholic, or, as
he says, " in darckense and in the shadow of death."
At about thirty, having often heard Silney the martyr,
and having, moreover, studied the world and thought
for himself, he, as he tells us, " began from that time
forward to smell the word of God, and to forsooke the
Schools Doctoui^, and such fooleries;" presently to
preach, and forthwith to pass for a seditious man, very
troublesome to those men in authority who did not act
with justice. For this was in the first place the salient
feature of his eloquence: he spoke to people of their
duties, in exact terms. One day, when he preached
before the university, the Bishop of Ely came, curious
to hear biTn. Immediately he changed his subject, and
drew the portrait of a perfect prelate, a portrait which
did not tiUy well with the bishop's character ; and he
was denounced for the act When he was made
chaplain of Henry VIII., awe-inspiring as the king was,
little as he was himself, he dared to write to him freely
to bid him Btop the persecution which was set on foot,
and to prevent the interdiction of the Bible ; verily he
risked his life. He had done it before, he did it again ;
like Tyndale, Knox, aU the leaders of the Keformation,
he lived in almost ceaseless expectation of death, and
in contemplation of the stake. Sick, liable to racking
headaches, stomachaches, pleurisy, stone, he wrought a
vast work, travelling, writing, preaching, delivering at
the age of eixty-seven two sermons every Sunday, and
I 8m vol. L p. 169, iu)t« 1.
VOL. n. N

178 THE RENAISSANCE. book it.

generaUy rising at two in the morning, winter and sum-
mer, to study. Nothing can be simpler or more effec-
tive than his eloquence; and the reason is, that he
never speaks for the sake of speaking, but of doing
work His sermons, amongst others those which he
preached before the young king Edward VI., are not,
like those of Massillon before the youthful Louis XV.,
hung in the air, in the calm region of philosophical
amplifications : Latimer wishes to correct, and he attacks
actual vices, vices which he has seen, which every one
can point at with the finger ; he too points them out,
calls things by their name, and people too, giving facts
and details, bravely ; and sparing nobody, sets himself
without hesitation to denounce and reform iniquity.
Universal as his morality is, ancient as is his text, he
applies it to his contemporaries, to his audience, at times
to the judges who are there " in velvet cotes," who will
not hear the poor, who give but a dog's hearing to such
a woman in a twelvemonth, and who leave another poor
woman in the Fleet, refusing to accept bail ; ^ at times
to the king's officers, whose thefts he enumerates, whom
he sets between hell and restitution, and of whom he
obtains, nay extorts, poimd for pound, the stolen money.^
From abstract iniquity he proceeds always to special
abuse ; for it is abuse which cries out and demands, not
a discourser, but a champion. With him theology holds
but a secondary place ; before all, practice : the true
offence against God in his eyes is a bad action ; the
true service, the suppression of bad deeds. And see by
what paths he reaches this. No grand words, no show

^ Latimer's Seven Sermons before Edward FL, ed. Edward Arber,
1869. Second sermon, pp. 73 and 74.

' Latimer's Sermons. Fifth Bermon, ed. Arber, p. 147.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 179

of style, no exhibition of dialectics. He relates his life,
the lives of others, giving dates, numbers, places ; he
abounds in anecdotes, little obvious circumstances, fit
to enter the imagination and arouse the recollections of
each hearer. He is familiar, at times humorous, and
always so precise, so impressed with real events and
particularities of English life, that we might glean from
his sennons an almost complete description of the man-
ners of his age and country. To reprove the great, who
appropriate common lands by their enclosures, he details
the needs of the peasant, without the least care for con-
ventional proprieties ; he is not working now for con-
ventionalities, but to produce convictions : —

" A plough land must have sheep ; yea, they must have sheep
to dung their ground for bearing of com ; for if they have no
sheep to help to fat the ground, they shall have but bare com
and thin. They must have swine for their food, to make their
veneries or bacon of : their bacon is their venison, for they shall
now have hangum tuum, if they get any other venison ; so that
bacon is their necessary meat to feed on, which they may not
lack. They must have other cattle : as horses to draw their
plough, and for carriage of things to the markets ; and kine for
their milk and cheese, which they must live upon and pay their
rents. These cattle must have pasture, which pasture if they
lack, the rest must needs fail them : and pasture they cannot
have, if the land be taken in, and enclosed from them." ^

Another time, to put his hearers on their guard against
hasty judgments, he relates that, having entered the
gaol at Cambridge to exhort the prisoners, he found a
woman accused of having killed her child, who would
make no confession : —

^ Latimer's Semuma, ed. Corner 1844, 2 vols., Lad Sermon preached
before Edward VL, i. 249.

180 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

*' Which denying gave us occasion to search for the matter,
and 80 we did. And at the length we found that her husband
loved her not ; and therefore he sought means to make her out
of the way. The matter was thus : ' a child of hers had been
sick by the space of a year, and so decayed as it were in a
consumption. At the length it died in harvest-time. She went
to her neighbours and other friends to desire their help, to
prepare the child to the burial : but there was nobody at home ;
every man was in the field. The woman, in an heaviness and
trouble of spirit, went, and being herself alone, prepared the
child to the burial. Her husband coming home, not having
great love towards her, accused her of the murder ; and so she
was taken and brought to Cambridge. But as far forth as I
could learn through earnest inquisition, I thought in my con-
science the woman was not guilty, all the circumstances well
considered. Immediately after this I was called to preach before
the king, which was my first sermon that I made before his
majesty, and it was done at Windsor ; when his msgesty, after
the sermon was done, did most familiarly talk with me in the
gallery. Now, when I saw my time, I kneeled down before his
msgesty, opening the whole matter ; and afterwards most humbly
desired his msgesty to pardon that woman. For I thought in
my conscience she was not guilty ; else I would not for all the
world sue for a murderer. The king most graciously heard my
humble request, insomuch that I had a pardon ready for her at
my return homeward. In the mean season that same woman
was delivered of a child in the tower at Cambridge, whose god-
father I was, and Mistress Cheke was godmother. But all that
time I hid my pardon, and told her nothing of it, only exhorting
her to confess the truth. At the length the time came when she
looked to suffer : I came, as I was wont to do, to instruct her ;
she made great moan to me, and most earnestly required me that
I would find the means that she might be purified before her
sufiering ; for she thought she should have been danmed, if she
should sufifer without purification. ... So we travailed with

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 181

this woman till we brought her to a good trade ; and at the
length shewed her the king's pardon, and let her go.'

" This tale I told you by this occasion, that though some
women be veiy unnatural, and forget their children, yet when we
hear anybody so report, we should not be too hasty in believing
the tale, but rather suspend our judgments till we know the
truth." 1

When a man preaches thus, he is believed ; we are
sure that he is not reciting a lesson ; we feel that he
has seen, that he draws his moral not from books, but
from facts ; that his counsels come from the solid basis
whence everything ought to come,— I mean from mani-
fold and personal experienca Many a time have I
listened to popular orators, who address the pocket,
and prove their talent by the money they have collected;
it is thus that they hold forth, with circumstantial,
recent, proximate examples, with conversational turns
of speech, setting aside great arguments and fine
language. Imagine the ascendency of the Scriptures
enlarged upon in such words ; to what strata of the
people it could descend, what a hold it had upon sailors,
workmen, servants ! Consider, again, how the authority
of these words is doubled by the courage, independence,
integrity, unassailable and recognised virtue of him
who utters them. He spoke the truth to the king,
unmasked robbers, incurred all kind of hate, resigned
his see rather than sign anything against his conscience;
and at eighty years, under Mary, refusing to recant,
after two years of prison and waiting — and what wait-
ing I he was led to the stake. His companion, Ridley,
slept the night before as calmly, we are told, as ever

^ Lfttimer's Sermons, ed. Corrie, First Sermon on the LoreTs Prayer,
L835.

182 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

he did in his life ; and when ready to be chained to
the post, said aloud, " heavenly Father, I give Thee
most hearty thanks, for that Thou hast called me to be
a professor of Thee, even unto death." Latimer in his
turn, when they brought the lighted faggots, cried, "Be
of good comfort. Master Ridley, and play the man : we
shall this day light such a candle by God's grace, in
England, as I trust shall never be put out." He then
bathed his hands in the flames, and resigning his soul
to God, he expired.

He had judged rightly : it is by this supreme trial
that a creed proves its strength and gains its adherents ;
tortures are a sort of propaganda as well as a testimony,
and make converts whilst they make martyrs. All the
writings of the time, and all the commentaries which
may be added to them, are weak compared to the actions
which, one after the other, shone forth at that time
from learned and unlearned, down to the most simple
and ignorant. In tliree years, under Mary, neariy three
hundred persons, men, women, old and young, some all
but children, allowed themselves to be burned alive
rather than to abjure. The all-powerful idea of God,
and of the faith due to Him, made them resist
all the protests of nature, and all the trembling
of the flesh. " No one will be cro\Mied," said one of
them, " but they who fight like men ; and he who en-
dures to the end shall be saved." Doctor Rogers was
burned first, in presence of his wife and ten children,
one at the breast. He had not been told beforehand,
and was sleeping soundly. The wife of the keeper of
Newgate woke him, and told him that he must bum
that day. " Then," said he, " I need not truss my points."
In the midst of the flames he did not seem to suffer.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 183

" His children stood by consoling him, in such a way
that he looked as if they were conducting him to a
merry marriage." ^ A young man of nineteen, William
Hunter, apprenticed to a silk-weaver, was exhorted by
his parents to persevere to the end : —

" In the mean time William's father and mother came to him,
and desired heartily of God that he might continue to the end
in that good way which he had begun : and his mother said to
him, that she was glad that ever she was so happy to bear such
a child, which could find in his heart to lose his life for Christ's
name's sake.

" Then William said to his mother, * For my little pain which
I shall suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised
me, mother (said he), a crown of joy : may you not be glad of
that, mother f ' With that his mother kneeled down on her
knees, saying, * I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end ;
yea, I think thee as well-bestowed as any child that ever I
bare.' . . .

" Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped
over the parlour groundsel, and went forward cheerfully ; the
sheriff's servant taking him by one arm, and I his brother by
another. And thus going in the way, he met with his father
according to his dream, and he spake to his son weeping, and
saying, * God be with thee, son William ; * and William said,
* (Jod be with you, good father, and be of good comfort ; for I
hope we shall meet again, when we shall be merry.' His father
said, ' I hope so, William ; ' and so departed. So William went
to the place where the stake stood, even according to his dream,
where aU things were very unready. Then William took a wet
broom-faggot, and kneeled down thereon, and read the £fty-first

^ NoaiUes, the French (and Catholic) Ambassador. John Fox,
History of the Acts and Monuments oftiu Churchy ed. Townsend, 1843,
S voU., YL 612, says : "^His wife and children, being eleven in number,
and ten able to go, and one sucking on her breast, met him by the way,
as he went towcrda Smithfield." — Te.

184 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Psalm, till he came to these words, * The sacrifice of Ood is a
contrite spirit ; a contrite and a broken heart, God, thou wilt
not despise.' . . .

'' Then said the sheriff, * Here is a letter from the queen. If
thou wilt recant thou shalt live ; if not, thou shalt be burned.'

* No,' quoth William, * I will not recant, (>od willing.' Then
William rose and went to the stake, and stood upright to it.
Then came one Richard Ponde, a bailiff, and made fast the chidn
about William.

" Then said master Brown, * Here is not wood enough to bum
a leg of him.' Then said William, * Good people ! pray for me ;
and make speed and despatch quickly : and pray for me while
you see me alive, good people ! and I will pray for you likewise.'

* Now 1 ' quoth master Brown, * pray for thee ! I will pray no
more for thee, than I will pray for a dog.' . . .

*^ Then was there a gentleman which said, ' I pray God have
mercy upon his soul.' The people said, * Amen, Amen.'

'* Immediately fire was made. Then William cast his psalter
right into his brother's hand, who said, * William ! think on the
holy passion of Christ, and be not afraid of death.' And William
answered, 'I am not afraid.' Then lift ho up his hands to
heaven, and said, * Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit ; ' and,
casting down his head again into the smothering smoke, he
yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it with his blood to the
praise of God." ^

When a passion is able thus to subdue the natural
affections, it is able also to subdue bodily pain; all
the ferocity of the time laboured in vain against inward
convictions. Thomas Tomkins, a weaver of Shoreditch,
being asked by Bonner if he could stand the fire well,
bade him try it. "Bonner took Tomkins by the
fingers, and held his hand directly over the flame," to
terrify him. But "he never shrank, till the veins

* Fox, History of the Ads, etc., vi. 727.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 185

shrank and the sinews burst, and the water (blood) did
spirt in Mr. Harpsfield*s face."^ "In the Isle of
Guernsey, a woman with child being ordered to the
fire, was delivered in the flames, and the infant being
taken from her, was ordered by the magistrates to be
thrown back into the fire."^ Bishop Hooper was
bumed three times over in a small fire of green wood.
There was too little wood, and the wind turned aside
the smoke. He cried out, "For God*s love, good
people, let me have more fire." His legs and thighs
were roasted ; one of his hands fell off before he
expired; he endured thus three-quarters of an hour;
before him in a box was his pardon, on condition that
he would retract. Against long sufferings in mephitic
prisons, against everything which might unnerve or
seduce, these men were invincible : five died of hunger *
at Canterbury ; they were in irons night and day, with
no covering but their clothes, on rotten straw; yet
there was an understanding amongst them, that the
" cross of persecution " was a blessing from God, " an
inestimable jewel, a sovereign antidote, weU-approved,
to cure love of self and earthly affection." Before
such examples the people were shaken. A woman
wrote to Bishop Bonner, that there was not a child
but called him Bonner the hangman, and knew on his
fingers, as well as he knew his pater, the exact number
of those he had bumed at the stake, or suffered to die
of hunger in prison these nine months. " You have
lost the hearts of twenty thousand persons who were
inveterate Papists a year ago." The spectators encour-
aged the martyrs, and cried out to them that their

1 Fox, History of the Acts, etc., vi 719.
* Neal, SisUyryo/the PuritoM, ed. Toulmin, 5 vols., 1793, i 96.

186 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

cause was just The Catholic envoy Renard wrote to
Charles V. that it was said that several had desired to
take their place at the stake, by the side of those who
were being burned. In vain the queen had forbidden,
on pain of death, all marks of approbation. "We
know that they are men of God," cried one of the
spectators ; " that is why we cannot help saying, God
strengthen them." And all the people answered,
"Amen, Amen." What wonder if, at the coming of
Elizabeth, England cast in her lot with I^rotestantism ?
The threats of the Armada urged her on still further ;
and the Reformation became national under the pres-
sure of foreign hostility, as it had become popular
through the triumph of its martyrs.

IV.

Two distinct branches receive the common sap,—
one above, the other beneath : one respected, flourishing,
shooting forth in the open air ; the other despised, half
buried in the ground, trodden under foot by those who
woidd crush it : both liWng, the Anglican as well as
the Puritan, the one in spite of the effort made to
destroy it, the other in spite of the care taken to
develop it

The court has its religion, like the country — a
sincere and winning religion. Amid the pagan poetry
which up to the Revolution always had the ear of the
world, we find gradually piercing through and rising
higher a grave and grand idea which sent its roots
to the depth of the public mind. Many poets,
Drayton, Davies, Cowley, Giles Fletcher, Quarles, Cra-
shaw, wrote sacred histories, pious or moral verses,
noble stanzas on death and the immortality of the soul,

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 187

on the frailty of things human, *and on the supreme
providence in which alone man finds the support of
his weakness and the consolation of his sufferings.
In the greatest prose writers, Bacon, Burton, Sir Thomas
Browne, Ealeigh, 'we see spring up the fiiiits of venera-
tion, thoughts about the obscure beyond; in short,
faith and prayer. Several prayers written by Bacon are
amongst the finest known ; and the courtier Ealeigh,
whilst writing of the faU of empires, and how the
barbarous nations had destroyed this grajid and magni-
ficent Roman Empire, ended his book with the ideas
and tone of a Bossuet.^ Picture Saint Paul's in
London, and the fashionable people who used to meet
there; the gentlemen who noisily made the rowels of
their spurs resound on entering, looked around and
carried on conversation during service, who swore by
God's eyes, God's eyelids, who amongst the vaults and
chapels showed off their beribboned shoes, their chains,
scarves, satin doublets, velvet cloaks, their braggadocio
manners and stage attitudes. All this was very free,
very loose, very far from our modern decency. But
pass over youthful bluster; take man in his great
moments, in prison, in danger, or indeed when old age
arrives, when he has come to judge of life ; take him,
above all, in the country, on his estate, far from any
town, in the church of the village where he is lord ;
or again, when he is alone in the evening, at his table,
listening to the prayer offered up by his chaplain, having

* ** eloquent, just, and mightie Death ! whom none could advise,
thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou hast done ; and whom
all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and
despised ; thou hast drawne together all the farre stretched greatnesse,
all the pride, cmeltie, and amhition of man, and covered it all over
with these t?ro narrow words, Hicjacct.**

188 THE RENAISSANCR book ii.

no books but some big folio of dramas, well dog's-eared
by his pages, and his prayer-book and Bible ; you may
then understand how the new religion tightens its
hold on these imaginative and serious minds. It does
not shock them by a narrow rigour ; it does not fetter
the flight of their mind; it does not attempt to ex-
tinguish the buoyant flame of their fancy ; it does not
proscribe the beautiful : it preserves more than any
reformed church the noble pomp of the ancient worship,
and roUs under the domes of its cathedrals the rich
modulations, the majestic hjumonies of its grave, organ-
led music. It is its characteristic not to be in opposi-
tion to the world, but, on the contrary, to draw it
nearer to itself, by bringing itself nearer to it By its
secular condition as well as by its external worship, it
is embraced by and it embraces it: its head is the
Queen, it is a part of the Constitution, it sends its
dignitaries to the House of Lords ; it suffers its priests
to marry ; its benefices are in the nomination of the
great families ; its chief members are the younger sons
of these same families : by all these channels it imbibes
the spirit of the age. In its hands, therefore, reforma-
tion cannot become hostile to science, to poetry, to the
liberal ideas of the Renaissance, Nay, in the nobles
of Elizal)eth and James I., as in the cavaliers of Charles
I., it tolerates aitistic tastes, philosophical curiosity,
the ways of the world, and the sentiment of the
beautiful The alliance is so strong, that, under Crom-
well, the ecclesiastics in a mass were dismissed for
their king's sake, and the cavaliers died wholesale for
the Church. The two societies mutually touch and
are confounded together. If several poets are pious,
several ecclesiastics are poetical, — ^Bishop Hall, Bishop

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 189

Corbet, Wither a rector, and the preacher Donne. K
several laymen rise to religious contemplations, several
theologians. Hooker, John Hales, Taylor, ChUlingworth,
set philosophy and reason by the side of dogma. Ac-
cordingly we find a new literature arising, lofty and
original, eloquent and moderate, jumed at the same
time against the Puritans, who sacrifice freedom of
intellect to the tyranny of the text, and against the
Catholics, who sacrifice independence of criticism to
the tyranny of tradition ; opposed equally to the
servility of literal interpretation, and the servility
of a prescribed interpretation. Opposed to the first
appears the learned and excellent Hooker, one of
the gentlest and most conciliatory of men, the most
solid and persuasive of logicians, a comprehensive
mind, who in every question ascends to the principles,^
introduces into controversy general conceptions, and
the knowledge of human nature;^ beyond this, a

* Hooker's Works, e<L Keble, 1836, 3 vols., The Ecclesiastical
Polity.

« Ibid. I book i 249, 258, 312 :—

*' That which doth assign nnto each thing the kind, that which doth
moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and
measure of working, the same we term a Law. . . .

*• Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether,
though it were but for awhile, the observation of her own laws ; if those
principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this
lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have ;
if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen
and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted
motions, ... if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a
giant doth run his unwearied course, should as it were through a
languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself : . . . what
would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve ?
See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is
the atay of the whole world ? . . .

" Between men and beasts there is no possibility of sociable com-

190 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

methodical writer, correct and always ample, worthy of
being regarded not only as one of the fathers of the
English Church, but as one of the founders of English
prose. With a sustained gravity and simplicity, he
shows the Puritans that the laws of nature, reason, and
society, like the law of Scripture, are of divine institu-
tion, that all are equally worthy of respect and obedi-
ence, that we must not sacrifice the inner word, by
which God reaches our intellect, to the outer word, by
which God reaches our senses; that thus the civil
constitution of the Church, and the visible ordinance
of ceremonies, may be conformable to the will of God,
even when they are not justified by a clear text of
Scripture ; and that the authority of the magistrates,
as well as the reason of man, does not exceed its rights
in establishing certain imiformities and disciplines on
which Scripture is silent, in order that reason may
decide : —

" For if the natural strength of man's wit may by experience
and study attain unto such ripeness in the knowledge of things

munion because the well-spring of that communion is a natural delight
which man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from
others into himself, especially those things wherein the excellency of his
kind doth most consist. The chiefest instrument of human communion
therefore is speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another
the conceits of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause, seeing
beasts are not hereof capable, forasmuch as with them we can use no
such conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures
on earth to whom nature hath denied sense, yet lower than to be
sociable companions of man to whom nature hath given reason ; it is
of Adam said, that amongst the beasts * he found not for himself any
meet companion.' Civil society doth more content the nature of man
than any private kind of solitary living, because in society this good of
mutual participation is so much lai*ger than otherwise. Herewith not-
withstanding we are not satisfied, but we covet (if it might be) to have
a kind of society and fellowship even with all mankind."

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 191

human, that men in this respect may presume to build some-
what upon their judgment ; what reason have we to think but
that even in matters divine, the like wits furnished with neces-
sary helps, exercised in Scripture with like diligence, and assisted
with the grace of Almighty God, may grow unto so much per-
fection of knowledge, that men shall have just cause, when any-
thing pertinent unto faith and religion ia doubted of, the more
willingly to incline their minds towards that which the sentence
of so grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most
sound. '* ^

This " natural light " therefore must not be despised,
but rather used so as to augment the other, as we put
torch to torch ; above all, employed that we may live
in harmony with each other.^

" Far more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take
in these strifes) to labour under the same yoke, as men that
look for the same eternal reward of their labours, to be conjoined
with you in bands of indissoluble love and amity, to live as if
our persons being many, our souls were but one, rather than in
such dismembered sort to spend our few and wretched days in a
tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions."

In fact, the conclusions of the greatest theologians
are for such harmony: abandoning an oppressive practice
they grasp a liberal spirit. If by its political structure
the English Church is persecuting, by its doctrinal struc-
ture it is tolerant ; it needs the reason of the laity too
much to refuse it liberty ; it lives in a world too culti-
vated and thoughtful to proscribe thought and culture.
John Hales, its most eminent doctor, declared several

^ Eec Pol, i book ii ch. vii. 4, p. 405.

* See the DitUogues of OcUileo. The same idea which is persecuted
by the church at Rome is at the same time defended by the church in
Kngland. See also £!cc Pol i. hook iiL 461-481.

192 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

times that Tie -would renounce the Chmch of England
to-morrow if she insisted on the doctrine that other
Christians would be damned ; and that men believe
other people to be damned only when they desire them
to be so.* It was he again, a theologian, a prebendaiy,
who advises men to trust to themselves alone in re-
ligious matters ; to leave nothing to authori^, or
antiquity, or the majority ; to use their own reason in
believing, as they use "their own l^s in walking ;** to
act and be men in mind as well as in the rest; and to
regard as cowardly and impious the borrowing <tf
doctrine and aloth of thought So Chillingworth, a
notably militant and loyal mind, the most exact, the
most penetrating, and the most convincing of con-
troversialists, first Protestant, then Catholic, then Pro-
testant i^ain and for ever, has the coui^e to say that
these great changes, wrouglit in himself and by himself,
tlirough study and research, are, of all his actions, those
which satisfy him most He maintains that reason
alone applied to Scripture ought to persuade men ; that
authority lias no claim in it ; that nothing is more
against religion than to force religion ; that the great
principle of the Keformation is liberty of conscience ;
and that if the doctrines of tlie different Protestant
sects are not absolutely tnie, at least they are free from
all impiety and from all error damnable in itself, or de-
structive of salvation. Thus is developed a new school
of polemics, a theology, a solid and rational apolc^tics,
rigorous in its arguments, capable of expansion, con-
firmed by science, and which, authorizing independence
of personal judgment at the same time with the inter-

' ClareDdoD. 8m the suae doctrine* in Jtmaj Tftjlor, L i bi rt jf
of Pn^phetying, 18*7.

\

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 193

veDtioo of the natural reason, leaves religion within
reach of the world and the estahlishments of the past
straggUng with the future.

A writer of genius appears amongst these, a proae-
poet, gifted with an imagination like Spenser and Shak-
speare, — Jeremy Taylor, who, from the bent of his mind
aa well as from circumstances, was destined to present
the alliance of the Renaissance with the Reformation,
and to cany into the pulpit the ornate style of the
court A preacher at St Paul's, appreciated and
admired by men of fashion for his youthful and fresh
beauty and his graceful bearing, as also for his splendid
diction ; patronised and promoted by Archbishop Laud,
he wrote for the ting a defence of episcopacy ; became
chaplain to the king's army ; was taken, ruined, twice
Imprisoned by the Parliamentarians ; married a natural
daughter of Charles I. ; then, after the Restoration, was
loaded with honours ; became a bishop, member of the
Privy Council, and vice-chancellor of the university of
Dublin. In every passage of his life, fortunate or other-
wise, private or public, we see that he is an Anglican,
a royalist, imbued with the spirit of the cavaliers and
conitiers, not with their vices. On the contrary, there
was never a better or more upright man, more zealous
in his duties, more tolerant by principle ; so that, pre-
serving a Christian gravity and purity, he received from
Uie Benaissance only its rich imagination, its classical
erudition, and its liberal spirit But he had these gifts
entire, as they existed in the most brilliant and original
of the men of the world, in Sir Philip Sidney, Lord
Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, with the graces, splendours,
refinements which are characteristic of these sensitive
and creative geniuses, and yet with the redundancies,
VOL n.

194 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

singularities^ incongruities inevitable in an age when
excess of spirit prevented the soundness of taste. like
all these writers, like Montaigne, he was imbued with
classic antiquity ; in the pulpit he quotes Greek and
Latin anecdotes, passages from Seneca, verses of
Lucretius and Euripides, and this side by side with texts
from the Bible, from the Gospels, and the Fathers,
Cant was not yet in vogue ; the two great sources of
teaching. Christian and Pagan, ran side by side ; they
were collected in the same vessel, without imagining
that the wisdom of reason and nature could mar the
wisdom of faith and revelation. Fancy these strange
sermons, in which the two eruditions, Hellenic and
Evangelic, flow together with their texts, and each text
in its own language; in which, to prove that fathers
are often unfortunate in their children, the author brings
forward one after the other, Chabrias, Germanicus,
Marcus Aurelius, Hortensius, Quintus Fabius Maximus,
Scipia Africanus, Moses, and Samuel ; where, in the form
of comparisons and illustrations is heaped up the spoil
of histories, and authorities on botany, astronomy,
zoology, which the cyclopaedias and scientific fancies at
that time poured into the brain. Taylor will relate
to you the history of the bears of Pannonia, which, when
wounded, will press the iron deeper home ; or of the
apples of Sodom, which are beautiful to the gaze, but '
full within of rottenness and worms ; and many others
of the same kind. For it was a characteristic of men of
this age and school, not to possess a mind swept, levelled,
regulated, laid out in straight paths, like the seventeenth
century writers in France, and like the gardens at
Versailles, but full, and crowded with circumstantial
facts, complete dramatic scenes, little coloured pictures.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 195

pellmell and badly dusted; so that, lost in confusion
and dust, the modem spectator cries out at their
pedantry and coarseness. Metaphors swarm one above
the other, jumbled, blocking each other's path, as in
Shakspeare. We think to foUow one, and a second
begins, then a third cutting into the second, and so on,
flower after flower, firework after fiiework, so that the
brightness becomes misty with sparks, and the sight
ends in a haze. On the other hand, and just by virtue
of this same turn of mind, Taylor imagines objects, not
vaguely and feebly, by some indistinct general concep-
tion, but precisely, entire, as they are, with their visible
colour, their proper form, the multitude of true and parti-
cular details which distinguish them in their species.
He is not acquainted with them by hearsay ; he has seen
them. Better, he sees them now and makes them to
be seen. Read the following extract, and say if it does
not seem to have been copied from a hospital, or from a
field of battle : —

" And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths,
or the pressures of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in
a breach almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt
to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired
musket, and his hunger slacked by a greater pain and a huge fear ?
This man shall stand in his arms and wounds, pattens luminU
atque 9olis, pale and faint, weary and watchful; and at night
shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his
bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent
to its own dimensions ; and all this for a man whom he never
saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him ; but one that shall
condemn him to the gallows if he runs away from all this misery." ^

* Jeremy Taylor's Works, ed. Eden, 1840, 10 vols., iSTo/y Dying,
ch. iiL sec 4, § 8, p. 815.

196 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

This is the advantage of a full imagination over
ordinary reason. It produces in a lump twenty or thirty
ideas, and as many images, exhausting the subject which
the other only outlines and sketches. There are a thou-
sand circumstances and shades in every event ; and they
are all grasped in living words like these : —

" For 80 have I seen the httle purls of a spring sweat through
the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement,
till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot ; and
it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning,
till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to
carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the
neighbouring gardens ; but then the despised drops were grown
into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the
first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty
prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man,
or the counsels of a single sermon ; but when such beginnings
are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy
as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow
up to ulcers and pestilential evils ; they destroy the soul by their
abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the
pressure of a little finger." ^

All extremes meet in that imagination. The cava-
liers who heard him, found, as in Ford, Beaumont and
Fletclier, the crude copy of the most coarse and imclean
truth, and the light music of the most graceful and airy
fancies ; the smell and horrors of a dissecting room,^ and
all on a sudden the freshness and cheerfulness of smil-
ing dawn ; the hateful detail of leprosy, its white spots,
its inner rottenness ; and then this lovely picture of a
lark, rising amid the early perfumes of the fields : —

^ Sermon xvi. , Of Chrowth in Sin,

' ** We have already opened up this dunghill covered with snow,
which was indeed on the outside white as the spots of leprosy. "

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 197

" For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and
soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven,
and climb above the clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back
with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made
irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the
tempest, than it could recover by the vibration and frequent
weighing of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit
down and pant, and stay till the storm was over ; and then it
made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had
learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes
through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the
prayer of a good man.'' ^

And he continues with the charm, sometimes with
the very words, of Shakspeare. In the preacher, as
well as in the poet, as well as in all the cavaliers and
all the artists of the time, the imagination is so full,
that it reaches the real^ even to its filth, and the ideal
as far as its heaven.

How could true religious sentiment thus accom-
modate itself to such a frank and worldly gait ? This,
however, is what it has done; and more — the latter
has generated the former. With Taylor, as well as
with the others, bold poetry leads to profound faith.
If this alliance astonishes us to-day, it is because in this
respect people have grown pedantic. We take a formal
man for a religious man. We are content to see him
stiff in his black coat, choked in a white neckerchief,
with a prayer-book in his hand. We confound piety
with decency, propriety, permanent and perfect regu-
larity. We proscribe to a man of faith all candid
speech, all bold gesture, all fire and dash in word or act ;
we are shocked by Luther's rude words, the bursts of

1 CMden Orove Sermons : V. " The Return of Prayers."

198 THE RENAISSANCE. . book n.

laughter which shook his mighty paunch, his rages like
a working-man, his plain and free speaking, the auda-
cious familiarity with which he treats Christ and the
Deity. ^ We do not perceive that these freedoms and
this recklessness are precisely signs of entire belief, that
warm and immoderate conviction is too sure of itself
to be tied down to an irreproachable style, that impul-
sive religion consists not of punctilios but of emotions.
It is a poem, the greatest of all, a poem believed in ;
this is why these men found it at the end of their
poesy : the way of looking at the world, adopted by
Shakspeare and all the tragic poets, led to it ; another
step, and Jacques, Hamlet, would be there. That vast
obscurity, that black imexplored ocean, " the unknown
country," which they saw on the verge of our sad life,
who knows whether it is not bounded by another shore ?
The troubled notion of the shadowy beyond is national,
and tliis is why the national renaissance at this time
became Christian. When Taylor speaks of death he
only takes up and works out a thought which Shak-
speare had already sketched: —

" All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the
varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of acci-
dents in the world, and every contingency to every man, and to
every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to
look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth, and
digs a grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow

^ Luther's Table Talk, ed. Hazlitt, No. 187, p. 30 : When Jesus
Christ was bom, he doubtless cried and wept like other children, and
his mother tended him as other mothers tend their children. As he
grew up he was submissive to his parents, and waited on them, and
carried his supposed father's dinner to him ; and when he came back,
Mary no doubt often said, **My dear little Jesus, where hast thou
been?"

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 199

our bodies, till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable
eternity."

For beside this final death, which swallows us whole,
there axe partial deaths which devour us piecemeal : —

''Every revolution which the son makes about the world,
divides between life and death ; and death possesses both those
portions by the next morrow; and we are dead to all those
months which we have already lived, and we shall never live
them over again : and still (rod makes little periods of our age.
First we change our world, when we come from the womb to
feel the warmth of the sun. Then we sleep and enter into the
image of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all the
changes of the world : and if our mothers or our nurses die, or
a wild boar destroy our vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard
it not, but during that state are as disinterest as if our eyes
were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth.
At the end of seven years our teeth &11 and die before us, repre-
senting a formal prologue to the tragedy ; and still eveiy seven
years it is odds but we shall finish the last scene : and when
nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces, weakening
some parts and loosing others, we taste the grave and the
solemnities of our own funerals, first in those parts that minis-
tered to vice, and next in them that served for ornament, and
in a short time even they that served for necessity become useless,
and entangled like the wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is
but a dressing to our funeraLs, the proper ornament of mourning,
and of a person entered very far into the regions and possession
of death : and we have many more of the same signification ;
gray hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath,
stiff limbe, wrinkled skin, short memoiy, decayed appetite.
Eveiy day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which
death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap and slept in his
outer chambers. The veiy spirits of a man prey upon the daily
portion of bread and flesh, and eveiy meal is a rescue from one

200 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

death, and lays up for another ; and while we thmk a thought,
we die; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of
eternity : we form our words with the breath of our nostrils, we
have the less to live upon for every word we speak." ^

Beyond all these destructions other destructions are
at work ; chance mows us down as well as nature, and
we are the prey of accident as well as of necessity : —

'' Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things
which are the instruments of acting it : and God by all the
variety of His providence makes us see death evei3rwhere, in all
variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies, and
the expectation of every siugle person.^ . . . And how many
teeming mothers have rejoiced over their swelling wombs, and
pleased themselves in becoming the channels of blessing to a
£Eunily, and the midwife hath quickly bound their heads and
feet and carried them forth to burial?^ . . . You can go no
whither but you tread upon a dead man's bones.'' ^

Thus these powerful words roll on, sublime as an
organ motett ; this universal crushing out of human
vanities has the funeral grandeur of a tragedy ; piety
in this instance proceeds from eloquence, and genius
leads to faith. All the powers and all the tenderness
of the soul are moved. It is not a cold rigorist who
speaks ; it is a man, a moved man, with senses and a
heart, who has become a Christian not by mortification,
but by the development of bis whole being : —

** Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair
cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and
strong flexture of the joints of five and twenty, to the hollowness
and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three

^ Holy Difing, ed. Eden, ch. L sec. i. p. 267.
» Ibid 267. » Ibid 268. * Ibid, 269.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 201

daTB* burial, and ve Bball perceive the distance to be very great
and vei; strange. But bo have I seen a rose newly Bpringing
from the clefts of ita hood, and at fint it was fair as the morning,
and fall with the dew of heaven as a lamb's fleece ; but when &
ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled
its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on dark-
nen, and to decline to softness and the aymptoms of a sickly age ;
it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and at night having lost
some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of
weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of every
man and every woman, tlie heritage of worms and 'serpents,
rottenness and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed, that
our acquaintance quickly knew us not ; and that change mingled
with BO much horror, or else meets ao with our feais and weak
discouisingB, that they who six houra ago tended upon us either
with charitable or ambitious services, cannot withont some rq^
Btay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life
and honour. I have read of a fair young German gentleman
who living often refused to be pictured, but put off the impor-
tunity of his friends' desire by giving way that after a few days'
burial tliey might send a paint«r to his vault, and if they saw
cause for it draw the image of his death unto the life : they did
so, and found his foce half eaten, and his midriff and backbone
fidl of serpents ; and so he stands pictured among hia armed
ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as
bad with you as me ; and then what servants shall we have to
wait upon us in the grave t what friends to visit us 1 what ofii-
dous people to cleanse away the moiet and unwholesome cloud
reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults,
which are the longest weepers for our funeral ) " '

Brought hither, like Hamlet to the burying-^roimd,
amid the Bkulls which he recognises, and under the
oppieBsion of the death which he touches, man needs

' ffoly Difing, ch. i. mc. ii. p. 270.

202 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

but a slight effort to see a new world arise in his heart.
He seeks the remedy of his sadness in the idea of eter-
nal justice, and implores it with a breadth of words
which makes the prayer a hymn in prose, as beautiful
as a work of art : —

^' Eternal (rod, Almighty Father of men and angeU, by whoee
care and providence I am preserved and blessed, comforted and
assisted, I humbly beg of Thee to pardon the sins and foUies of
this day, the weakness of my services, and the strengths of my
passions, the rashness of my words, and the vanity and evil of
my actions. just and dear Qod, how long shall I confess my
sins, and pray against them, and yet (all under them I let it
be so no more ; let me never return to the follies of which I am
ashamed, which bring sorrow and death, and Thy displeasure,
worse than death. Give me a command over my inclinattons
and a perfect hatred of sin, and a love to Thee above all the
desires of this world. Be pleased to bless and preserve me thi^
night from all sin and all violence of chance, and the malice of
the spirits of darkness : watch over me in my sleep ; and
whether I sleep or wake, let me be Thy servant. Be Thou first
and last in all my thoughts, and the guide and continual assist-
ance of all my actions. Preserve my body, pardon the sin of
my soul, and sanctify my spirit. Let me always live holily and
soberly ; and when I die receive my soul into Thy hands." ^

V.

This was, however, but an imperfect Reformation,
and the official religion was too closely bound up with
the world to undertake to cleanse it thorouglily : if it
repressed the excesses of vice, it did not attack its
source ; and the paganism of the Eenaissance, following
its bent, already under James I. issued in the corruption,

^ Th^ Golden Orow.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 203

OTgie^ disgusting, and drunken habits, provoking and
gross sensuality,^ which subsequently under the Re-
storation stank like a sewer in the sun. But under-
neath the established Protestantism was propagated the
forbidden Protestantism: the yeomen were settling
their faith like the gentlemen, and already the Puritans
made headway under the Anglicans.

No culture here, no philosophy, no sentiment of
harmonious and pagan beauty. Conscience alone spoke,
and its restlessness had become a terror. The sons of
the shopkeeper, of the farmer, who read the Bible in
the bam or the counting-house, amid the barrels or the
wool-bags, did not take matters as a handsome cavalier
bred up in the old mythology, and refined by an elegant
Italian education. They took them tragically, sternly
examined ' themselves, pricked their hearts with their
scruples, filled their imaginations with the vengeance of
God and the terrors of the Bible. A gloomy epic,
terrible and grand as the Edda, was fermenting in their
melancholy imaginations. They steeped themselves in
texts of Saint Paul, in the thundering menaces of the
prophets ; they burdened their minds with the pitiless
doctrines of Calvin ; they admitted that the majority
of men were predestined to eternal damnation : ^ many
believed that this multitude were criminal before their
birth ; that God willed, foresaw, provided for their ruin ;
that He designed their punishment from all eternity ;

* See in Beaumont and Fletcher's Thierry and Theodoret the
haracten of Bawder, Protalyce, and Bninhalt. In The Custom of the
Country, by the aame authors, several scenes represent the inside of an
infamous house, — a frequent thing, by the way, in the dramas of that
time ; but here the boarders in the house are men. See also their
Mule a Wife and have a Wife.

' Calvin, quoted by Haag, ii 216, Histoire dea Dogmes Chritiena.

204 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

that He created them simply to give them up to it.^
Nothing but grace can save the wretched creature, free
grace, God's sheer favour, which He only grants to a
few, and which He distributes not according to the
struggles and works of men, but according to the
arbitrary choice of His single and absolute wilL We
are " children of wrath," plague-stricken, and condemned
from our birth ; and wherever we look in all the ex-
panse of heaven, we find but thunderbolts flashing to
destroy us. Fancy, if you can, the effects of such an
idea on solitary and morose minds, such as this race and
climate generates. Several persons thought themselves
damned, and went groaning about the streets ; others
hardly ever slept They were beside themselves, always
imagining that they felt the hand of God or the claw
of the devil upon them. An extraordinary power, im-
mense means of action, were suddenly opened up in the
soul, and there was no barrier in the moral life, and no
establishment in civil society which their eflforts could
not upset.

Forthwith private life was transformed. How could
ordinary sentiments, natural and every-day notions of
happiness and pleasure, subsist before such a conception ?
Suppose men condemned to death, not ordinary death,
but the rack, torture, an infinitely horrible and infinitely
extended torment, waiting for their sentence, and yet
knowing that they had one chance in a thousand, in a
hundred thousand, of pardon ; could they still go on
amusing themselves, taking an interest in the business
or pleasure of the time ? The azure heaven shines not
for them, the sun warms them not, the beauty and
sweetness of things have no attraction for them ; they

^ These were the Supralapsarians.

XA

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 205

have lost the wont of laughter ; they fasten inwardly,
pale and silent, on their anguish and their expectation ;
they have but one thought : " Will the judge pardon
me ? " They anxiously probe the involuntary motions
of their heart, which alone can reply, and the inner
revelation, which alone can render them certain of
pardon or ruin. They think that any other condition
of mind is imholy, that recklessness and joy are mon-
strous, that every worldly recreation or preoccupation
is an act of paganism, and that the true mark of a
Christian is trepidation at the very idea of salvation.
Thenceforth rigour and rigidity mark their manners.
The Puritan condemns the stage, the assemblies, the
world's pomps and gatherings, the court's gallantry and
elegance, the poetical and symbolical festivals of the
country, the May-poles days, the merry feasts, beU-ring-
ings, all the outlets by which sensuous or instinctive
nature endeavoured to relieve itself. He gives them up,
abandons recreations and ornaments, crops his hair
closely, wears a simple sombre-hued coat, speaks through
his nose, walks stiffly, with his eyes turned upwards,
absorbed, indifferent to visible things. The external and
natural man is abolished ; only the inner and spiritual
man survives ; there remains of the soul only the ideas
of God and conscience, — a conscience alarmed and dis-
eased, but strict in every duty, attentive to the least
requirements, disdaining the caution of worldly moral-
ity, inexhaustible in patience, courage, sacrifice, en-
throning chastity on the domestic hearth, truth before
the tribunals, honesty in the counting-house, labour in
the workshop, everywhere a fixed determination to bear
all and do all rather than fail in the least injunction of
moral justice and Bible-law. The stoical energy, the

206 THE RENAISSANCE. book it.

fundamental honesty of the race, were aroused at the
appeal of an enthusiastic imagination; and these un-
bending characteristics were displayed in their entirety
in conjunction with abnegation and virtue.

Another step, and this great movement passed from
within to without, from individual manners to public in-
stitutions. Observe these people in their reading of the
Bible, they apply to themselves the commands imposed
on the Jews, and the prologues urge them to it. At
the beginning of their Bibles the translator ^ places a
table of the principal words in the Scripture, each with
its definition and texts to support it. They read and
weigh these words : "Abomination before God are Idoles,
Images. Before whom the people do bow them selfes."
Is this precept observed? No doubt the images are
taken away, but the queen has still a crucifix in her
chapel, and is it not a remnant of idolatry to kneel
down when taking the sacrament ? " Abrogadon, that
is to abolyshe, or to make of none eflfecte : And so the
lawe of the commandementes whiche was in the decrees
and ceremonies, is abolished. The sacrifices, festes,
meates, and al outwarde ceremonies are abrogated, and
all the order of priesthode is abrogated." Is this so,
and how does it happen that the bishops still take
upon themselves the right of prescribing faith, wor-
ship, and of tyrannising over Christian consciences?
And have they not preserved in the organ-music, in the
surplice of the priests, in the sign of the cross, in a
hundred other practices, all these visible rites which
God has declared profane ? " Abuses, The abuses that

^ The ByhlCj nm(?c laUly with greate industry and Diligece recognised
(by £dm. Becke), Lond., by John Daye and William Seres, 1549, with
Tdynale's Prologues,

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAIf RENAISSANCE. 207

be in the church ought to be corrected by the prynces.
The ministers ought to preache against abuses. Any
maner of mere tradicions of man are abuses." What,
meanwhile, is their prince doing, and why does he
leave abuses in the church ? The Christian must rise
and protest ; we must purge the church from the pagan
crust with which tradition has covered it^

Such are the ideas conceived by these imcultivated
minds. Fancy the simple folk, more capable by their
simplicity of a sturdy faith, these freeholders, these big
traders, who have sat on juries, voted at elections, deli-
berated, discussed in common private and public busi-
ness, used to examine the law, the comparing of pre-
cedents, all the detail of juridical and legal procedure ;
bringing their lawyer's and pleader's training to bear
upon the interpretation of Scripture, who, having once
formed a conviction, employ for it the cold passion, the
intractable obstinacy, the heroic sternness of the English
character. Their precise and combative minds take the
business in hand. Every one holds himseK bound to
be ready, strong, and well prepared to answer all such
as shall demand a reason of his faith. Each one has
his difficulty and conscientious scruple^ about some
portion of the liturgy or the official hierarchy ; about

' Examination of Mr. Axton : "I can't consent to wear the sur-
plice, it itf against my conscience ; I trust, by the help of Go<], I shall
never put on that sleeve, which is a mark of the beast*' — Examination
of Mr. White, " a substantial citizen of London " (1572), accused of
not going to the parish church : " The whole Scriptures are for destroy-
ing idolatry, and everything that belongs to it" — "Where is the
place where these are forbidden?" — **In Deuteronomy and other
places ; . . . and God by Isaiah commandeth not to pollute ourselves
with the garments of the image."

' One expression continually occurs : "Tenderness of conscience'*
— "*a squeamish stomach " — " our weaker brethren."

208 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

the dignities of canons and archdeacons, or certain pas-
sages of the funeral service; about the sacramental
bread or the reading of the apocryphal books in church ;
about plurality of benefices or the ecclesiastical square
cap. They each oppose some point, all together the
episcopacy and the retention of Bomish ceremonies.^
Then they are imprisoned, fined, put in the pillory ; they
have their ears cut off; their ministers are dismissed,
hunted out, prosecuted.^ The law declares that any one
above the age of sixteen who for the space of a month
shall refuse to attend the established worship, shall be
imprisoned until such time as he shall submit ; and if
he does not submit at the end of three months, he shall
be banished the kingdom; and if he returns, put to
death. They allow this to go on, and show as much
firmness in suffering as scruple in belief; for a tittle
about receiving of the communion, sitting rather than
kneeling, or standing rather than sitting, they give up
their livings, their property, their liberty, their country.
One Dr. Leighton was imprisoned fifteen weeks
in a dog's kennel, without fire, roof, bed, and in
irons: his hair and skin fell off; he was set in the
pillory during the November frosts, then whipt, and
branded on the forehead ; his ears were cut off, his
nose slit ; he was shut up eight years in the Fleet, and
thence cast into the common prison. Many went
cheerfully to the stake. Religion with them was a
covenant, that is, a treaty made with God, which must
be kept in spite of everything, as a 'v^Titten engagement,
to the letter, to the last syllable. An admirable and
deplorable stiffness of an over-scrupulous conscience,

1

1564.

■ -^--^—~^ ~- '- — ^- — • — --— — r — — — '-" — ^— — ^^f

The separation of the Anglicans and dissenters may be dated;fix>xn

« 1592.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN KENAISSANCE. 209

vhich made cavillers at the same time with believera,
whicli was to make tyrants after it had made martyrs.

Between the two, it made fighting men. These men
had become wonderfully wealthy and bad increased in
numbers in the course of eighty years, as is always the
case with men who labour, live honestly, and pass their
lives uprightly, sustained by a powerful source of action
iiom within. Thenceforth they are able to resist, and
ihey do resist when driven to extremities ; they choose
to have recourse to arms rather than be driven back to
idolatry and sin. The Long Parliament assembles,
defeats the king, purges religion ; the dam is broken,
tiie Independents are hurled above the Presbyterians,
the fanatics above the mere zealots ; irresistible and
overwhelming faith, enthusiasm, grow into a torrent,
swallow up, or at least disturb the strongest minds,
politicians, lawyers, captains. The Commons occupy a
day in every week in deliberating on the progress of
religion. As soon as they touch upon doctrines they
become furious. A poor man, Paul Best, being accused
of denying the Trinity, they demand the passing of a
decree to punish him with death ; James Nayler having
imagined that he was God, the Conmions devote them-
selves to a trial of eleven days, with a Hebraic animosity
and ferocity : " I think him worse than possessed with
the deviL Our God is here supplanted. My ears
trembled, my heart shuddered, on hearing this report.
I will speak no more. Let us all stop our ears and stone
him."^ Before the House of Commons, publicly, the men
in authority had ecstasies. After the expulsion of the
Prestyterians, the preacher Hugh Peters started up in
the middle of a sermon, and cried out : " Now I have

> Barton's Parliamentary Diary, ed, by Ratt, 1S28, 1 Tob. L G4.
VOL. n. P

210 THE RENAISSANCE. book u.

it by RevelatioQ, now I shall tell you. This army
most root up Mooarchy, not only here, but in France
and other kingdoms round about ; this is to bring you
out of £^ypt : this Army is that corner-stone cut out
of the Mountaine, which must dash the powers of the
eartii to pieces. But it is objected, the way we walk in
is without president (sic) ; what think you of the Virgin
Mary? wasthereeveranypresident before, that a Woman
should conceive a Child without the company of a Man?
This is an Age to make examples and presidents in." *
Cromwell found prophecies, counsels in the Bible for
the present time, positive justifications of his policy.
" He looked upon the Design of the Lord in this day to
be the freeing of His People from every Burden, and
that was now accomplishing what was prophesied in
the 110th Fsalm; from the Consideration of which he
was often encouraged to attend the effecting those
Ends, spending at least an hour in the Exposition of
that Psalm." " Granted that be M-as a schemer,

> W&lker'B HiiUrry of IndtptTidmey, 1B18, part ii. p. 46.

' Thia passaije may serve as an example of the difficn]ti«s and
perplexities to vhich a translatoi of a History or Litemtnre moat
always be exposed, and this without any fault of the original author.
Ab tiTM diKt emna. M. Taine says that Cromwell found jnstiSeation
for his policy iu Psalm cxiiL, which, on looking out, 1 fonnd to be "an
exhortation to praise Goil for His excellency and for His meir?," — a
paalm by which CromncH's conduct could nowise he justified. I opened
then Carlyle's Oromiociri Lcltrrs, etc, and saw, iu vol. it part tL p.
1G7, tha same fact stated, but Psalm ex. metttioned aud given,— a far more
likely paalm to have influenced Cromwell Cnrlyle refers to Ludlow,
I SIS, Taine to Guizot, Portraits Politigva, p. SS, and to Carlyle. In
looking iu Onizot'a Totnme, fith ed., 1SS2, 1 find that this wiilwalio
mentions Paalm cziiL ; but on referring finally to the Menoirt iff
Edmund Ludlow, printed at Vivay {tic) in the Canton of Bern, 1498, 1
read, in vol. L p. 819, the sentence, ai given above ; therefore Oulyle
was tight— Tr.

r\

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 211

above all ambitious, yet he was truly fanatical and
sincere. His doctor related that he had been very
melancholy for years at a time, with strange hallucina-
tions, and the frequent fancy that he was at death's
door. Two years before the Revolution he wrote to his
cousin : " Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put
himself forth in the cause of his God than I. . . .
The Lord accept me in His Son, and give me to walk
in the light — and give us to walk in the light, as He
is the light ! . . . blessed be His Name for shining
upon so dark a heart as mine ! " ^ Certainly he
must have dreamed of becoming a saint as well as a
king, and aspired to salvation as well as to a throne.
At the moment when he was proceeding to Ireland, and
was about to massacre the Catholics there, he wrote to
his daughter-in-law a letter of advice which Baxter or
Taylor might willingly have subscribed. In the midst
of pressing aflfairs, in 1651, he thus exhorted his wife :
"My dearest, I could not satisfy myself to omit this
post, although I have not much to write. ... It joys
me to hear thy soul prospereth : the Lord increase His
favours to thee more and more. The great good thy
soul can wish is. That the Lord lift upon thee the light
of His countenance, which is better than life. The Lord
bless all thy good coimsel and example to all those
about thee, and hear aU thy prayers, and accept thee
always." * Dying, he asked whether grace once received
could be lost, and was reassured to learn that it could
not, being, as he said, certain that he had once been in
a state of grace. He died with this prayer: "Lord,
though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am

^ CrcmwelVs Letters and Speeches^ ed. Carljle, 1866, 8 yoIb. L 79.
s Idem, ii 273.

212 THE RENAISSANCR book il

in Covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I
will, come to Thee, for Thy People. Thou hast made
me, though very imworthy, a mean instrument to do
them some good, and Thee service. . . . Lord, however
Thou do dispose of me, continue and go on to do good
for them . . . and go on . . . with the work of refor-
mation ; and make the Name of Christ glorious in the
worid." ^ Underneath this practical, prudent, worldly
spirit, there was an English element of anxious and
powerful imagination, capable of engendering an impas-
sioned Calvinism and mystic fears.^ The same contrasts
were jumbled together and reconciled in the other
Independents. In 1648, after unsuccessful tactics,
they were in danger between the king and the Parlia-
ment ; then they assembled for several days together at
Windsor to confess themselves to God, and seek His
assistance ; and they discovered that all their evils came
firom the conferences they had had the weakness to pro-
pose to the king. " And in this path the Lord led us,"
said Adjutant Allen, " not only to see our sin, but also
our duty; and this so unanimously set with weight
upon each heart that none was able hardly to speak a
word to each other for bitter weeping, partly in the sense
and shame of our iniquities ; of our unbelief, base fear
of men, and carnal consultations (as the fruit thereof)
with our own wisdoms, and not with the Word of the
Lord."^ Thereupon they resolved to bring the king to
judgment and death, and did as they had resolved.
Around them, fanaticism and foUy gained ground.

^ CromwtlVa LeitcrSf ed. Carlylo, iii 378.

• See his speeches. The style is disjointed, obscure, impassioned,
OQt of the common, like that of a man who is not master of his wits,
and who yet sees straight by a sort of intuition.

' Cromwdts Letters^ i 265.

r\

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 213

Independents, Milleuariaus, AntinoniiaQs, Anabaptists,
Libertines, Faniiliats, Quakers, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Pet-
fectionists, Sociniana, Ariang, anti-Trinitarians, anti-
Scripturalists, Sceptics ; the list of sects is intenninable.
Women, soldiers, suddenly got up into the pulpit and
preached. The strangest ceremonies took place in public
In 1644, saya Dr. Featly, the Anabaptists rebaptised a
hundred men and women together at twil^ht, in streams,
in branches of the Thames, and elsewhere, plunging
them in the water over head and ears. One Gates, in the
county of Essex, was brought before a jury for the murder
of Anne Mariiin, who died a few days after her baptism
of a cold which bad seized her. George Fox the
Qoaker spoke with God, and witnessed with a loud
voice, in the streets and market-places, against the sins of
the e^ William Simpson, one of his disciples, " was
moved of the Lord to go, at several times, for three years,
naked and barefoot before them, as a sign unto them, in
the markets, courts, towns, cities, to priests* houses, and
to great men's houses, telling them, so shall they all be
stripped naked, as he was stripped naked. And sometime
he was moved to put on hair sackcloth, and to besmear
his face, and to tell them, so would the Lord besmear all
their religion as he was besmeared.'

" A female came into Whitehall Chapel stark naked,
in the midst of public worship, the Lord Protector
himself being present A Quaier came to the door of the
Farliament House with a drawn sword, and wounded
several who were present, saying that he was inspired
by the Holy Spirit to kill every man that sat in the
house." The Fifth Monarchy men believed that Christ

> A Journal of Bit Life, ek., of tiat Antitnt, Eminml, and Faithful
Senani ofJaiu Chriat, Oeorgt Fox, eth «dit, 183fl.

214 THE EENAISSANCE. book n.

was about to descend to reign in person upon earth for
a thousand years, with the saints for His ministers.
The Eanters looked upon furious vociferations and con-
tortions as the principal signs of faith. The Seekers
thought that religious truth could only be seized in a
sort of mystical fog, with doubt and fear. The Muggle-
tonians decided that " John Eeeve and Ludovick
Muggleton were the two last prophets and messengers
of God ; " they declared the Quakers possessed of the
devil, exorcised him, and prophesied that William Penn
would be damned. I have before mentioned James
Nayler, an old quartermaster of General Lambert, adored
as a god by his followers. Several women led his
horse, others cast before him their kerchiefs and scarves,
singing. Holy, holy. Lord God. They called him
" lovely among ten thousand, the only Son of God,
the propliet of the Most High, King of Israel, the
eternal Son of Justice, the Prince of Peace, Jesus, him in
whom the hope of Israel rests." One of them, Dorcas
Erbury, declared that she had lain dead for two whole
days in her prison in Exeter Gaol, and that Nayler
had restored her to life by laying his hands upon her.
Sarah Blackbury finding liini a prisoner, took him by
the hand and said, " Kise up my love, my dove, my
fairest one : why stayest tliou among the pots ?" Then
she kissed liis hand and fell down before him. When
he was put in the })illory, some of his disciples began
to sing, weep, smite their breasts ; others kissed his
hands, rested on his bosom, and kissed his woimds. *
Bedlam broken loose could not have surpassed them.
Undemeatli the surface and these disorderly bubbles

^ Burton's ParliamerUary Biaryy i. 46-173. Neal, History of the
Puritans, iii., Supplt.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 215

the wise and deep strata of the nation had settled, and
the new faith was doing its work with them, — a prac-
tical and positive, a political and moral work Whilst
the German Reformation, after the German wont, re-
sulted in great volumes and a scholastic system, the
English Reformation, after the English wont, resulted
in action and establishment "How the Church of
Christ shall be governed ;" that was the great question
which was discussed among the sects. The House of
Commons asked the Assembly of Divines : If the
classical, provincial, and local assemblies were jure
divino, and instituted by the will and appointment of
Jesus Christ ? If they were all so ? If only some
were so, and which ? If appeals carried by the elders
of a congregation to provincial, departmental, and
national assemblies were jure divino, and according to
the will and appointment of Jesus Christ ? If some
only were jure divino ? And which ? If the power of the
assemblies in such appeals was jure divino, and by the
will and appointment of Jesus Christ ? and a himdred
other questions of the same kind. Parliament declared
that, according to Scripture, the dignities of priest and
bishop were equal ; it regulated ordinations, convoca-
tions, excommunications, jurisdictions, elections ; spent
half its time and exerted all its power in establishing
the Presbyterian Church.^ So, with the Independents,
fervour engendered courage and discipline. "Cromwell's
regiment of horse were most of them freeholders' sons,
who engaged in the war upon principles of conscience ;
and that being well armed within, by the satisfaction
of their consciences, and without with good iron arms,
they would as one man stand firmly and charge desper-

1 See Neal, HUU of the Puritans, iL 418-450.

216 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

ately."» This army, in which inspired corporals
preached to lukewarm colonels, acted with the solidity
and precision of a Eussian regiment : it was a duty, a
duty towards God, to fire straight and march in good
order ; and a perfect Christian made a perfect soldier.
There was no separation here between theory and prac-
tice, between private and public life, between the
spiritual and the temporal. They wished to apply
Scripture to *' establish the kingdom of heaven upon
earth," to institute not only a Christian Church, but a
Christian Society, to change the law into a guardian of
morals, to compel men to piety and virtue ; and for a
while they succeeded in it " Though the discipline of
the church was at an end, there was nevertheless an
uncommon spirit of devotion among people in the
parliament quarters ; the Lord's day was observed with
remarkable strictness, the churches being crowded with
numerous and attentive hearers three or four times in
the day ; the officers of the peace patrolled the streets,
and shut up all publick houses ; there was no travelling
on the road, or walking in the fields, except in cases of
absolute necessity. Religious exercises were set up in
private families, as reading the Scriptures, family prayer,
repeating sermons, and singing of psalms, which was so
universal, that you might walk through the city of
London on the evening of the Lord's day, without see-
ing an idle person, or hearing anything but the voice of
prayer or praise from churches and private houses." ^
People would rise before daybreak, and walk a great dis-

^ Whitelocke'a MemwriaUt i 68.

• Neal, ii 653. Compare with the French Reyolntion. When the
Bastille was demolished, they wrote on the ruins these words : " Ici
Ton danse." From this contrast we see the difference between the two
systems and the two nations.

CHAP. T. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 217

tance to be able to hear the word of God. "There
were no gaming-housea, or houses of pleasure ; no pro-
fane swearing, drunkenness, or any kind of debauchery.'"
The Farliamentaiy soldiers came in great numbers to
listen to sermons, spoke of religion, prayed and sang
psalms tc^ether, when on duty. In 1644 Parliament
forbade the sale of commodities on Sunday, and ordained
" that no pereon shall travd, or carry a burden, or do
any worldly labour, upon penalty of lOs. for the
traveller, and Ss. for every burden. That no person
shall on the Lord's day use, or be present at, any
wrestling, shooting, fowling, ringing of bells for pleasure,
markets, wakes, church-ales, dancing, games or spoita
whatsoever, upon penalty of 53. to every one above
fourteen years of ag& And if children are found
offending in the premisea, their parents or guardians to
forfeit 12d. for every offence. If the several fines above
mentioned cannot be le\'ied, the offending party shall
be set in the stocks for the space of three hours."
When the Independents were in power, severity be-
came stiU greater. The officers in the army, having
convicted one of their quartermasters of blasphemy,
condemned htm to have his tongue bored with a red-
hot iron, his sword broken over his head, and himself
to be dismissed from the army. During Cromwell's
expedition in Ireland, we read that no blasphemy was
heard in the camp ; the soldiers spent their leisure hours
in reading the Bible, singing psalms, and holding religious
controversies. In 1650 ^e punishments inflicted on
Sabb&th-breakers were doubled. Stem laws were passed
against betting, gallantry was reckoned a crime ; the
theatres were destroyed, the spectators fined, the actors
' Vfl, But. of Oe Pmilans, iL 656.

218 THE EENAISSANCE. book n.

* whipt at the cart's tail ; adultery punished with death :
in order to reach crime more surely, they persecuted
pleasure. But if they were austere against others, they
were so against themselves, and practised the virtues
they exacted- After the Eestoration, two thousand
ministers, rather than conform to the new liturgy, resigned
their cures, though they and their families had to die
of hunger. Many of them, says Baxter, thinking that
they were not justified in quitting their ministry after
being set apart for it by ordination, preached to such
as would hear them in the fields and in certain houses,
until they were seized and thrown into prisons, where a
great number of them perished, Cromwell's fifty thou-
sand veterans, suddenly disbanded and without resources,
did not bring a single recruit to the vagabonds and
bandits. " The Royalists themselves confessed that,
in every department of honest industry, the discarded
warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was
charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard
to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a
waggoner, attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety,
he was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers." ^
Purified by persecution and ennobled by patience, they
ended by winning the tolerance of tlie law and the
respect of the public, and raised national morality,
as they had saved national liberty. But others, exiles
in America, pushed to the extreme this great religi-
ous and stoical spirit, with its weaknesses and its
power, with its vices and its virtues. Their determina-
tion, intensified by a fervent faith, employed in politi-
cal and practical pursuits, invented the science of emi-
gration, made exile tolerable, drove back the Indians,

^ Macaalay, HisL of England^ ed. Lady Treveljran, i. 1"21.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 219

fertilised the desert, raised a rigid morality into a civil
law, founded and armed a church, and on the Bible as
a basis built up a new state. ^

That was not a conception of life from which a
genuine literature might be expected to issue. The
idea of the beautiful is wanting, and what is a literature
without that ? The natural expression of the heart's
emotions is proscribed, and what is a literature without
that ? They abolished as impious the free stage and the
rich poesy which the Renaissance had brought them.
They rejected as profane the ornate style and copious
eloquence which had been established around them by
the imitation of antiquity and of Italy. They mis-
trusted reason, and were incapable of philosophy. They
ignored the divine languor of the Imitatio Christi and
the touching tenderness of the GospeL Their character
exhibits only manliness, their conduct austerity, their
mind preciseness. We find amongst them only excited
theologians, minute controversialists, energetic men of
action, narrow and patient minds, engrossed in positive
proofs and practical labours, void of general ideas and
refined tastes, dulled by texts, dry and obstinate
reasoners, who twisted the Scripture in order to extract
from it a form of government or a table of dogma.
What could be narrower or more repulsive than these
pursuits and wrangles? A pamphlet of the time
petitions for liberty of conscience, and draws its argu-
ments (1) from the parable of the wheat and the tares

^ A certain John Denis was publicly whipt for having sung a pro-
fane song. Mathias, a little girl, having given some roasted chestnuts
to Jeremiah Boosy, and told him ironically that he might give them back
to her in Paradise, was ordered to ask pardon three times in church,
and to be three days on bread and water in prison. 1660-1670 ;
records of Massachusetts.

220 THE RENAISSANCE. book n,

which grow together till the harvest; (2) from this
maxim of the Apostles, Let every man be thoroughly
persuaded in his own mind ; (3) from this text, What-
soever is not of faith is sin ; (4) from this divine rule
of our Saviour, Do to others what you would they
should do unto you. Later, when the angry Commons
desired to pass judgment on James Nayler, the trial
became entangled in an endless juridical and theological
discussion, some declaring that the crime committed
was idolatry, others seduction, all emptying out before
the House their armoury of commentaries and texts,*
Seldom has a generation been foimd more mutilated in
all the faculties which produce contemplation and orna-
ment, more reduced to the faculties which nourish dis-
cussion and morality. Like a beautiful insect which has
become transformed and has lost its wings, so we see
the poetic generation of Elizabeth disappear, leaving
in its place but a sluggish caterpillar, a stubborn
and useful spinner, armed with industrious feet and
formidable jaws, spending its existence in eating into
old leaves and devouring its enemies. They are without
style; they speak like business men; at most, here
and there, a pamphlet of Prynne possesses a little vigour.
Tlieir histories, like May's for instance, are flat and
hea\y. Their memoirs, even those of Ludlow and
Mrs. Hutchinson, are long, wearisome, mere statements,
destitute of personal feelings, void of enthusiasm or
entertaining matter ; " they seem to ignore themselves,
and are engrossed by the general prospects of their

^ "Upon the common sense of Scripture," said Megor-general
Disbrowe, "there are few but do commit blasphemy, as our Saviour
puts it in Mark : ' sins, blasphemies ; if so, then none without bias-
phemy.' It was charged upon David, and Eli's son, 'thou bast blas-
phemed, or caused others to blaspheme.' " — Burton's Diary^ L 54.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 221

cause." ^ Good works of piety, solid and convincing
sermons; sincere, edifying, exact, methodical books,
like those of Baxter, Barclay, Calamy, John Owen;
personal narratives, like that of Baxter, like Fox's
journal, Bimyan's life, a large collection of documents
and arguments, conscientiously arranged, — this is aU
they offer; the Puritan destroys the artist, stiffens the
man, fetters the writer ; and leaves of artist, , man,
writer, only a sort of abstract being, the slave of a
watchword. If a Milton springs up amongst them, it
is because by his great curiosity, his travels, his com-
prehensive education, above all by his youth saturated
in the grand poetry of the preceding age, and by his
independence of spirit, haughtUy defended even against
the sectarians, Milton passes beyond sectarianism.
Strictly speaking, the Puritans could but have one poet,
an involimtary poet, a madman, a martyr, a hero, and
a victim of grace; a genuine preacher, who attains
the beautiful by chance, whilst pursuing the useful on
principle ; a poor tinker, who, employing images so as
to be understood by mechanics, sailors, servant-girls,
attained, without pretending to it, eloquence and high
art

VI.

Next to the Bible, the book most widely read in
England is the Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan.
The reason is, that the basis of Protestantism is the
doctrine of salvation by grace, and that no writer has
equalled Bunyan in making this doctrine imderstood.

To treat well of supernatural impressions, a man must
have been subject to them. Bunyan had that kind of

1 Guizot, PoHraits P6lUiqw»^ 5th ed., 1862.

222 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

iinagination which produces them. Powerful as that
of an artist, but more vehement, this imagination
worked in the man without his co-operation, and be-
sieged him with visions which he had neither willed
nor foreseen. From that moment there was in him as
it were a second self, ruling the first, grand and terrible,
whose apparitions were sudden, its motions imknown,
which redoubled or crushed his faculties, prostrated or
transported him, bathed him in the sweat of agony,
ravished him with trances of joy, and which by its
force, strangeness, independence, impressed upon him
the presence and the action of a foreign and superior
master. Bunyan, like Saint Theresa, was from infancy
"greatly troubled with the thoughts of the fearful
torments of heU-fire," sad in the midst of pleasures,
believing himself damned, and so despairing, that he
wished he was a devil, " supposing they were only tor-
mentors ; that if it must needs be that I went thither,
I might be rather a tormentor, than be tormented my-
self."^ There already was the assault of exact and
bodily images. Under their influence reflection ceased,
and the man was suddenly spurred into action. The
first movement carried him with closed eyes, as down a
steep slope, into mad resolutions. One day, " being in
the field, with my companions, it chanced that an adder
passed over the highway ; so I, having a stick, struck
her over the back ; and liaving stunned her, I forced
open her mouth witli my stick, and plucked her sting
out with my fingers, by which act, had not God been
merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have
brought myself to my end." ^ In his first approaches
to conversion he was extreme in his emotions, and

^ Orau Abounding to the Chut/ of Sinners, § 7. • Ibid. § 12.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 223

penetrated to the heart by the sight of physical objects,
"adoring" priest, service, altar, vestment. "This
conceit grew so strong npon my spirit, that had I but
seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched
in his life), I should find my spirit fall under him,
reverence him, and knit unto him ; yea, I thought, for
the love I did bear unto them (supposing they were the
ministers of God), I could have laid down at their feet,
and have been trampled upon by them; their name,
their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me."^
Already his ideas clung to him with that irresistible
hold which constitutes monomania; no matter how
absurd they were, they ruled him, not by their truth,
but by their presence. The thought of an impossible
danger terrified him just as much as the sight of an
imminent periL As a man hung over an abyss by a
sound rope, he forgot that the rope was sound, and he
became giddy. After the fashion of English villagers,
he loved bell-ringing; when he became a Puritan, he
considered the amusement profane, and gave it up ; yet,
impelled by his desire, he would go into the belfry and
watch the ringers. " But quickly after, I began to
think, ' How if one of the bells should faU ? * Then I
chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart
the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might
stand sure ; but then I thought again, should the bell
fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then
rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam.
This made me stand in the steeple-door; and now,
thought I, I am safe enough, for if a bell should then
fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be
preserved notwithstanding. So after this I would yet

^ Grace Aboundingt § 17.

224 THE RENAISSANCK book n.

go to see them ring, bat would not go mj faitliei
than the steeple-door ; hut then it came into my head,
'How if the steeple itself should fall?' And this
thought (it may, for aught I know, when I stood and
looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I
durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was
forced to See, for fear the steeple should fall upon my
head." ' Frequently the mere conception of a ein
became for him at emptation so involuntary and so
strong, that he felt upon him the sharp claw of the devil
The fixed idea swelled in his head like a painful
abscess, faU of all Bensitiveneae and of all his life's
blood. " Now no ain would serve but that ; if it were
to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I
have been as if my mouth would have spoken that
word whether I would or no ; and in so strong a measure
was the temptation upon me, that often I have been
ready to clap my hands under my chin, to hold my
mouth from opening ; at other times, to leap with my
head downward into some muckhill hole, to keep my
mouth from speaking."^ Later, in the middle of s
eermoD which he was preaching, he was assailed by
blasphemous thoughts ; the word came to his lips, and
all his power of resistance was barely able to restrain
the muscle excited by the tyrannous brain.

Once the minister of the parish was preachii^ E^ainst
the sin of dancing, oaths, and games, when he was struck
with the idea that the sermon was for him, and returned
home full of trouble. But he ate ; his stomach being
charged, discharged his brain, and Itis remorse was dis-
persed. Like a true child, entirely absorbed by the
emotion of the moment, he was transported, jumped out,
> Oract Abounding, g 33, 31. * Itid. % 103.

CHAP. V. THE CHKISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 225

and ran to the sports. He had thrown his ball, and
waa about to begin again, when a voice from heaven
suddenly pierced his bouL " ' Wilt thou leave thy sins
and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell ? '
At this I was put to an exceeding maze ; wherefore,
leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven,
and was as if I had with the eyes of my underatanding,
seen the Lord Jesus look down upon me, as being very
hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely
tiireaten me with some grievous punishment for these
and other ungodly practices." ^ Suddenly reflecting
that his sins were very great, and that he would certainly
be damned whatever he did, he resolved to enjoy him-
self in the meantime, and to sin as much as he could
in this life. He took up his ball again, recommenced
the game with ardour, and swore louder and oftener
than ever. A month afterwards, being reproved by a
woman, " I was silenced, and put to secret shame, and
that too, as I thought, before the God of heaven : where-
fore, whQe I stood there, hanging down my head, I
wished that I might be a little child again, and that
my father might learn me to speak without this wicked
■way of swearing ; for, thought I, I am so accustomed
to it, that it is in vain to think of a reformation, for
that could never be. But how it came to pass I know
not, I did from this time forward so leave my swearing,
that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it ; and
whereas before I knew not how to speak unless I put
an oath before, and another behind, to make my words
have authority, now I could without it speak better, and
with more pleasantness, than ever I could before." ^
Theee sudden alternations, these vehement resolutions,
* Ibid. Sg 27 and 28.

226 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

this unlooked-for renewal of heart, are the products of
an involuntary and impassioned imagination, which by
its hallucinations, its mastery, its fixed ideas, its mad
ideas, prepares the way for a poet, and announces an
inspired man.

In him circumstances develop character ; his kind of
life develops his kind of mind. He was bom in the
lowest and most despised rank, a tinker's son, himself a
wandering tinker, with a wife as poor as himself, so that
they had not a spoon or a dish between them. He had
been taught in childhood to read and write, but he had
since " almost wholly lost what he had learned" Edu-
cation diverts and disciplines a man; fills him with
varied and rational ideas ; prevents him from sinking
into monomania or being excited by transport ; gives
him determinate thoughts instead of eccentric fancies,
pliable opinions for fixed convictions ; replaces impetu-
ous images by calm reasonings, sudden resolves by care-
f iQly w^eighed decisions ; furnishes us with the wisdom
and ideas of others ; gives us conscience and self-com-
mand. Suppress this reason and this discipline, and
consider the poor ignorant working man at his toil ;
his head works while his hands work, not ably, with
methods acquired from any logic be might have mustered,
but with dark emotions, beneath a disorderly flow of
confused images. Morning and evening, the hammer
which he uses in liis trade, drives in M-ith its deafening
sounds the same thouglit perpetually returning and self-
communing. A troubled, obstinate vision floats before
him in the brightness of the hammered and quivering
metal In the red furnace where the iron is glowing,
in the clang of the hammered brass, in the black comers
where the damp shadow creeps, he sees the flame and

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 227

darkness of hell, and the rattling of eternal chains.
Next day he sees the same image, the day after, the
whole week, month, year. His brow wrinkles, his eyes
grow sad, and hig wife hears him groan in the night-time.
She remembers that she has two volumes in an old bag,
The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of
Piety ; he spells them out to console himself; and the
printed thoughts, already sublime in themselves, made
more so by the slowness with which they are read, sink
like an oracle into his subdued faith. The braziers of
the devils — the golden harps of heaven — the bleeding
Christ on the cross, — each of these deep-rooted ideas
sprouts poisonously or wholesomely in his diseased
brain, spreads, pushes out and springs higher with a
ramification of fresh visions, so crowded, that in his en-
cumbered mind he has no further place nor air for
more conceptions. WiU he rest when he sets forth in
the winter on his tramp? During his long solitary
wanderings, over wild heaths, in cursed and haunted
bogs, always abandoned to his own thoughts, the inevi-
table idea pursues him. These neglected roads where
he sticks in the mud, these sluggish dirty rivers which
he crosses on the cranky ferry-boat, these threatening
whispers of the woods at night, when in perilous places
the iivid moon shadows out ambushed forms, — all that
he sees and hears falls into an involuntary poem around
the one absorbing idea ; thus it changes into a vast body
of visible legends, and multiplies its power as it multi-
plies its details. Having become a dissenter, Bunyan
is shut up for twelve years, having no other amusement
but the Book of Martyrs and the Bible, in one of those
pestiferous prisons where the Puritans rotted under the
Restoration. There he is, still alone, thrown back upon

228 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

himself by the monotony of his dungeon, besieged by
the terrors of the old Testament, by the vengeful out-
pourings of tlie j)rophets, by the thunder- striking
words of Paul, by the spectacle of trances and of
martyrs, face to face with God, now in despair, now
consoled, troubled with involuntary images and un-
lookeil-for emotions, seeing alternately devil and
angels, the actor and the witness of an internal drama
whose vicissitudes he is able to relata He writes them :
it is his book. You see now the condition of this in-
flamed brain. Poor in ideas, full of images, given up to
a fixed and single thought, plunged into this thought by
liis mechanical pursuit, by his prison and his readings,
by his knowledge and his ignorance, circumstances, like
nature, make him a visionary and an artist, furnish him
with supernatural impressions and visible images, teach-
ing him the history of grace and the means of express-
ing it.

Tlie Pilgriw!s Progress is a manual of devotion for the
use of simple folk, whilst it is an allegorical poem of
grace. In it we hear a man of the people speaking to the
people, who would render intelligible to all the terrible
doctrine of damnation and salvation.^ According to

^ This is an abstract of the events : — From highest heaven a voice
has proclaimed vengeance against the City of Destruction, where lives
a sinner of the name of Christian. Terrified, he rises up amid the jeers
of his neighbours, and departs, for fear of l)oing devoured by the fire
which is to consume the criminals. A helpful man. Evangelist^ shows
him the right road. A treacherous man, Worldlywisc^ tries to turn
him aside. His companion. Pliable, who had followed him at first,
gets stuck in the Slough of Despond, and leaves him. He advances
bravely across the dirty water and the slippery mud, and reaches the
Strait Gate, where a wise Interpreter instructs him by visible shows,
and points out the way to the Heavenly City. He passes before a
cross, and the heavy burden of sins, which he carried on his back, is

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 229

Bunyan, we are " children of wrath," condemned from
our birth, guilty by nature, justly predestined to destruc-
tion. Beneath this formidable thought the heart gives
way. The unhappy man relates how he trembled in
all his limbs, and in his fits it seemed to him as though
the bones of his chest would break " One day," he tells
us, " I walked to a neighbouring town, and sat do^v^l
upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep
pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought
me to ; and after long musing, I lifted up my head, but
methought I saw, as if the sun that shineth in the
heavens did grudge to give light ; and as if the very
stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did band
themselves against me. how happy now was every
creature over I was ! For they stood fast, and kept
their station, but I was gone and lost." ^ Tlie devils
gathered together against the repentant sinner; they

loosened and falls off. He painfully climbs the steep liill of IXffiaiHy,
and reaches a great castle, where Watchful, the guardian, gives him in
charge to his good daughters Piety and Prudence^ who warn him and
arm him against the monsters of hell. He finds his road barred by
one of these demons, Apollyon, who bids him abjure obedience to the
heavenly King. After a long fight he conquers him. Yet the way
grows narrow, the shades fall thicker, sulphurous flames rise along the
road : it is the valley of the Shadow of Death, Ho passes it, and
arrives at the town of Vanity, a vast fair of business, deceits, and sliows,
which he walks by with lowered eyes, not wishing to take part in its
festivities or falsehoods. The people of the place beat him, throw him
into prison, condemn him as a traitor and rebel, burn his companion
FaitJifuX. Escaped from their hands, he falls into those of Oiant
Despair, who beats him, leaves him in a poisonous dungeon without
food, and giving him daggers and cords, advises liim to rid himself from
so many misfortunes. At last he reaches the Delectable Mountains^
whence he sees the holy city. To enter it he has only to cross a deep
river, where there is no foothold, where the water dims the sight, and
which is called the river of Death.

^ Banyan's Grace abounding to the C^ief of Sinners, §187.

230 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

choked his sight, besieged him with phantoms, yelled at
his side to drag him down their precipices ; and the
black valley into which the pilgrim plunges, almost
matches by the horror of its symbols the agony of the
terrors by which he is assailed : —

*' I saw then in my Dream, bo far as this Valley reached, there
was on the right hand a very deep Ditch ; that Ditch is it into
which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both
there miserably perished. Again, behold on the lefl hand, there
was a very dangerous Quag, into which, if even a good man
falLi, he can find no bottom for his foot to stand on. . . .

** The i)ath-way was here also exceeding narrow, and therefore
good Ciiristian was the more put to it ; for when he sought in
the dark to shun the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip
over into the mire on the other ; also when he sought to escape
the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall
into the ditch. Thus he went on, and I heard him here sigh
bitterly; for, besides the dangers mentioned above, the path-
way was here so dark, that ofttimes, when he lift up his foot to
set forward he knew not where, or upon what he should set it
next.

" About the midst of this Valley, I perceived the mouth of
Hell to be, and it stood also hard by the wayside. Now,
thought Christian, what shall I do ? And ever and anon the
flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with
sparks and hideous noises. . . . that he w^as forced to put up his
Sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called All-prayer.
So he cried in my hearing : " Lord, I beseech thee deliver my
soul." Thus ho went on a great while, yet still the flames
would be reaching towards him : Also he heard doleful voices,
and nishings to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he should
be torn in pieces, or trodden down like mire in the Streets." ^

^ PihjrirrCa Progress, Cambridge 1862, First Part, p. 64.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 231

Against this agony, neither his good deeds, nor his
prayers, nor his justice, nor all the justice and all the
prayers of all other men, could defend him. Grace
alone justifies. God must impute to him the purity of
Christ, and save him by a free choice. What can be
more fuU of passion than the scene in which, under the
name of his poor pilgrim, he relates his own doubts, his
conversion, his joy, and the sudden change of his heart ?

'' Then the water stood in mine eyes, and I asked further,
But, Lord, may such a great sinner as I am be indeed ac-
cepted of thee, and be saved by thee ? And I heard him say.
And him that cometh to me I wUl in no wise cast out. . . . And
now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears, and mine
affections running over with love to the Name, People, and
Ways of Jesus Christ. . . .

^* It made me see that all the World, notwithstanding all the
righteousness thereof, is in a state of condenmation. It made
me see that God the Father, though he be just, can justly
justify the coming sinner. It made me greatly ashamed of the
vileness of my former life, and confounded me with the sense
of mine own ignorance ; for there never came thought into my
heart before now, that shewed me so the beauty of Jesus Christ.
It made me love a holy life, and long to do something for the
Honour and Glory of the Name of the Lord Jesus ; yea, I
thought that had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body,
I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus." ^

Such an emotion does not weigh literary calculations.
Allegory, the most artificial kind, is natural to Bunyan.
If he employs it here, it is because he does so through-
out ; if he employs it throughout, it is from necessity,
not choice. As children, countrymen, and all uDculti-
vated minds, he transforms arguments into parables ; he

1 Pilgrim's Progress, First Part, p. 160.

232 THE RENAISSANCE, book n.

only grasps truth when it is clothed in images ; abstract
temis elude hiin ; he must touch forms and contemplate
colours. Dry general truths are a sort of algebra,
acquired by the mind slowly and after much trouble,
against our primitive inclination, which is to observe
detailed events and visible objects ; man being in-
capable of contemplating pure formulas until he is
transformed by ten years' reading and reflection. We
understand at once tlie term purification of heart;
Bunyan understands it fully only, after translating it
by this fable : —

" Then the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led
him into a very large Parlour that was full of dust, because
never swept ; the which after he had reviewed a little while,
the Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now when he began
to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to ily about, that
Christian had almost therewith been choaked. Then said the
Interpreter to a Damsel that stood by, Bring hither the Water,
and sprinkle the Room ; the which when she had done, it was
swept and cleansed wnth pleasure.

" Then said Christian, What means this 1

*' The Interpreter answered. This Parlour is the heart of a man
that was never sanctified by tlie sweet Grace of the Gospel : the
dust is his Original Sin, and inward Corruptions, that have
defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first, is the
Law ; but she that brought water, ami did sprinkle it, is the
Gospel. Now, whereas thou sawest that so soon as the first
began to sweep, the dust did so fly about that the Room by him
could not be cleansed, but that thou wast almost choaked there
with ; this is to shew thee, that the Law, instead of cleansing
the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, put strength
into and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and
forbid it for it doth not give power to subdue.

*^ Again, as thou sawest the Damsel sprinkle the room with

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 233

Water, upon which it was cleansed with pleasure ; this is to shew
thee that when the Gospel comes in the sweet and preciona
InfluenceB thereof to the heart, then I say, even as thou sawest the
Damsel lay the dust fay sprinkling the floor with Water, so is sin
vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean, through the
faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of 6I017 to in-
habit." •

These repetitions, embarrassed phrases, familiar com-
parisons, this artless style, whose awkwardness recalls
the childish periods of Herodotus, and whose simplicity
recalls tales for children, prove that if his work is alle-
gorical, it. is so in order that it may be int^Uigible, and
that fiuuyaQ is a poet because he is a child.^

If you study him well, however, you will find power
under his simplicity, and in his puerility the vision.
These allegories are hallucinations as clear, complete,
and sound as ordinary perceptious. No one but Spen-
ser is so lucid. Imaginary objects rise of themselves
before him. He has no trouble in calliug them up 01
forming them. They ^ree in all their details with all

' PilgrivCi /Vojtms, Firat Part, p. 28.

* Here is another of hia allegories, almost witty, to just and
dmple it is. See Pilgrim'i Progrta, First Part, p. 68 : Now 1 saw in
my Dream, that at the end of tliia Valley lay blooJ, bonea, aahes, and
mangled bodies of men, even of Pilgrims that had gone this way
formerly ; and while I was musing what should be the reason, I espied
a little before me a Cave, where two Giants, Pope and Pagan, dwelt in
old time ; by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood,
aabe*, etc., lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place
Christian went without mu{^h danger, whereat I somewhat wondered ;
but I have leomt since, that Pagan has been dead many a day ; and as
for the other, though be be yet aliye, he is by reason of age, and also
of the many shrewd bmahes that he met with in his younger days,
grown so crazy, and stiff in hia joints, that he can now do little more
than ait in his Cave's month, grinning at Pilgrima as they go by, and
biting his nails, because he cannot come at them.

234 THE RENAISSANCE. book il

the details of the precept which they represent, as a
pliant veil fits the body which it covers. He distin-
guishes and arranges all the parts of the landscape —
here the river, on the right the castle, a flag on its left
turret, the setting sun three feet lower, an oval cloud in
the front part of the sky — with the preciseness of a
land-surveyor. We fancy in reading him that we are
looking at the old maps of the time, in which the
striking features of the angular cities are marked on the
copperplate by a tool as certain as a pair of compasses.^
Dialogues flow from his pen as in a dream. He does
not seem to be thinking ; we should even say that he
was not himself there. Events and 8i)eeches seem to
grow and dispose themselves within him, independently
of his will. Nothing, as a rule, is colder than the
characters in an allegory ; his are living. Looking
upon these details, so small and famUiar, illusion gains
upon us. Giant Despair, a simple abstraction, becomes
as real in his hands as an English gaoler or farmer.
He is heard talking by night in bed with his wife
Diffidence, who gives him good advice, because here, as
in other households, the strong and brutal animal is the
least cunning of the two : —

*^ Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning
he should (take the two prisoners and) beat them without mercy.
So when he arose, he getteth him a giievous Crab-tree Cudgel,
and goes down into the Dungeon to them, and there first falls
to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they gave him
never a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats
them fearfully, in such sort, that they were not able to help
themselves, or to turn them upon the floor." ^

* For instance, Hollar's work, CUks of Germany.
• Pilgrim* 8 Progrets, First Part, p. 126.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 235

This stick, chosen with a forester's experience, this
instinct of rating first and storming to get oneself into
trim for knocking down, are traits which attest the
sincerity of the narrator, and succeed in persuading the
reader. Bunyan has the copiousness, the tone, the ease,
and the clearness of Homer ; he is as close to Homer
as an Anabaptist tinker could be to an heroic singer, a
creator of gods.

I err ; he is nearer. Before the sentiment of the
sublime, inequalities are levelled. The depth of emotion
raises peasant and poet to the same eminence ; and here
also, allegory stands the peasant in stead. It alone, in
the absence of ecstasy, can paint heaven ; for it does
not pretend to paint it : expressing it by a figure, it
declares it invisible, as a glowing sun at which we
cannot look straight, and whose image we observe in a
mirror or a stream. The ineffable world thus retains
aU its mystery ; warned by the allegory, we imagine
splendours beyond all which it presents to us ; we feel
behind the beauties which are opened to us, the infinite
which is concealed ; and the ideal city, vanishing as
soon as it appears, ceases to resemble the material
Whitehall imagined for Jehovah by Milton. Read the
arrival of the pilgrims in the celestial land. Saint
Theresa has nothing more beautiful : —

" Yea, here they heard continually the singing of Birds, and
saw every day the Flowers appear in the earth, and heard the
voice of the Turtle in the land. In this Country the Sun
shineth night and day. . . . Here they were within sight of the
City they were going to, also here met them some of the inhabit-
ants thereof; for in this land the Shining Ones commonly
walked, because it was upon the borders of Heaven. . . . Here
they heard voices from out of the City, loud voices, saying, ' Say

236 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold thy salvation cometh, behold
his reward is with him ! ' Here all the inhabitants of the
Country called them * The holy People, The redeemed of the
Lord, Sought out, etc.*

" Now as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing
than m parts more remote from the Kingdom to which they were
bound; and drawing near to the City, they had yet a more
perfect view thereof. It was builded of Pearls and Precious
Stones, also the Street thereof was paved with gold ; so that by
reason of the natural glory of the City, and the reflection of the
Sun-beams upon it. Christian with desire fell sick ; Hopeful also
had a fit or two of the same disease. Wherefore here they lay
by it a while, crying out because of their pangs, * If you see my
Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.' ^ . . .

" They therefore went up here with much agility and speed,
though the foundation upon which the City was framed was
higher than the Clouds. They therefore went up through the
Regions of the Air, sweetly talking as they went, being com-
forted, because they safely got over the River, and had such
glorious Companions te attend them.

" The talk that they had with the Shining Ones was about the
glory of the place, who told them that the beauty and glory of
it was inexpressible. There, said they, is the Mount Sion, the
heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of Angels, and the
Spirits of just men made perfect. You are going now, said they,
to the Paradise of God, wherein you shall see the Tree of Life,
and eat of the never-fading fruits tliereof ; and when you come
there, you shall have white Robes given you, and your walk and
talk shall be every day witli the King, even all the days of
Eternity. 2

" There came out also at this time to meet them, several of
the King's Trumpeters, cloathed in white and shining Raiment,
who with melodious noises and loud, made even the Heavens to
echo with their sound. These Trumpeters saluted Christian

> Pilgrim's Progress, First Part, p. 174. « Ibid, p. 179.

CHAP. V. THE CHRISTIAN RENAISSANCE. 237

and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes from the World, and
this they did with shouting and sound of Trumpet.

" This done, they compassed them round on every side ; some
went before, some behind, and some on the right hand, some on
the left (as 't were to guard them through the upper Regions),
continually sounding as they went with melodious noise, in notes
on high ; so that the very sight was to them that could behold
it, as if Heaven itself was come down to meet them. . . .

" And now were these two men as 't were in Heaven before
they came at it, being swallowed up with the sight of Angels,
and with hearing of their melodious notes. Here also they had
the City itself in view, and they thought they heard all the Bells
therein ring to welcome them thereto. But above all the warm
and jojrful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling
there, with such company, and that for ever and ever. Oh by
what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed ! '* ^ . . .

" Now I saw in my Dream that these two men went in at
the Grate ; and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured, and
they had Raiment put on that shone like Crold. There was also
that met them with Harps and Crowns, and gave them to them,
the Harps to praise withal, and the Crowns in token of honour.
Then I heard in my Dream that all the Bells in the City rang
again for joy, and that it was said unto them, ' Enter ye into
the joy of your Lord.' I also heard the men themselves, that
they sang with a loud voice, saying, * Blessing, Honour, Glory,
and Power, be to him that sitteth upon the Throne, and to the
Lamb for ever and ever.'

" Now, just as the Gates were opened to let in the men, I
looked in after them, and behold, the City shone like the Sun ;
the Streets also were paved with Gold, and in them walked
many men, with Crowns on their heads, Palms in their hands,
and golden Harps to sing praises withal

'^ There were also of them that had wings, and they answered
one another without intermission, saying, * Holy, holy, holy, is

1 PUgrinCa Progress, First Part, p. 182.

238 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

the Lord.' And after that they shut up the Gates. Which
when I had seen, I wished myself among them." ^

He was imprisoned for twelve years and a half ; in
his dungeon he made wire-snares to support himself
and his family ; he died at the age of sixty in 1688.
At the same time Milton lingered obscure and blind.
The last two poets of the Reformation thus survived,
amid the classical coldness which then dried up English
literature, and the social excess which then corrupted
English morals. " Shorn hypocrites, psalm-singers,
gloomy bigots," such were the names by which men who
reformed the manners and renewed the constitution of
England were insulted. But oppressed and insulted as
they were, their work continued of itself and without
noise underground ; for the ideal which they had raised
was, after all, that which the clime suggested and
the race demanded. Gradually Puritanism began to
approach the world, and the world to approach Puritan-
ism. Tlie Restoration was to fall into evil odour, the
Revolution was to come, and beneath the gradual pro-
gress of national sympathy, as well as under tlie in-
cessant effort of public reflection, parties and doctrines
were to rally around a free and moral Protestantism.

* PilgrivVs Progress, First Part, p. 183, etc.

CHAPTER VI.

Hilton.

Os the bordera of the licentious Benaiss&nce vbich
was drawing to a close, and of tlie exact school of
poetiy which was springing up, between the mono-
tonous conceits of Cowley and the correct gallantries
of Waller, appeared a mighty and superb mind, prepared
by logic and enthusiasm for eloquence and the epic
style ; liberal, Protestant, a moralist and a poet, adorn-
ing the cause of Algernon Sidney and Locke with the
inspiration of Spenser and Shakapeare ; the heir of a
poetical age, the precursor of au austere age, holding
his place between the epoch of unselfish dreaming and
the epoch of practical action; like his own Adam, who,
taking his way to an unfriendly land, heard behind
him, in the closed Eden, the dying strains of heaven.

John Milton was not one of those fevered souls
void of self-command, whose rapture takes them by fits,
whom a sickly sensibility drives for ever to the extreme
of sorrow or joy, whose pliability prepares them to pro-
duce a variety of characters, whose inquietude condemns
them to paint the madness and contradictions of passion.
Vast knowledge, close log}c, and grand passion ; these
were hie marks. His mind was lucid, bis im^ination
limited. He was incapable of " bating one jot of heart
or hope," or of being transformed. He conceived the

240 . THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

loftiest of ideal beauties, but he conceived only one.
He was not bom for the drama, but for the ode. He
does not create souls, but constructs arguments, and
experiences emotions. Emotions and arguments, all
the forces and actions of his soul, assemble and are
arranged beneatli a unique sentiment, that of tlie
sublime ; and tlie broad river of lyric poetry streams
from him, impetuous, with even flow, splendid as a
cloth of gold.

I.

This dominant sense constituted the greatness and
the firmness of his character. Against external fluc-
tuations he found a refuge in himself; and the ideal
city which he had built in his soul, endured impregnable
to all assaults. It is too beautiful, this inner city, for
him to wish to leave it ; it was too solid to be destroyed.
He believed in the sublime with the whole force of his
nature, and the whole authority of his logic ; and with
him, cultivated reason strengthened by its tests the
suggestions of primitive instinct. With this double
armour, man can advance firmly through life. He who
is always feeding himself with demonstrations is capable
of believing, willing, persevering in belief and will ; he
does not change with every event and every passion,
as that fickle and pliable being whom we call a poet ;
he remains at rest in fixed principles. He is capable
of embracing a cause, and of continuing attached to it,
whatever may happen, spite of all, to the end. No
seduction, no emotion, no accident, no change alters the
stability of his conviction or the lucidity of his know-
ledge. On the first day, on the last day, during the
whole time, he preserves intact the entire system of

CHAP. vr. MILTON. 241

his clear ideas, and the logical vigour of Lis brain sus-
tains the manly vigour of his heart. When at length,
as here, this close logic is employed in the service of noble
ideas, enthusiasm is added to constancy. The nian
holds his opinions not only as true, but as sacred. He
fights for them, not only as a soldier, but as a priest
He is impassioned, devoted, rehgious, lieroic. Barely
is such a mixture seen ; but it was fully seen in
MiltoD,

He was of a family in which courage, moral nobility,
the love of art, were present to whisper the most
beautiful and eloquent words around his cradle. His
mother was a most exemplary woman, well known
through all the neighbourhood for her benevolence.' His
father, a student of Christ Church, and disinherited
as a Protestant, had made his fortmie by his own
enei^es, and, amidst his occupations as a scrivener or
writer, had preserved the taste for letters, being unwill-
ing to give up " his liberal and intelligent tastes to the
extent of becoming altogether a slave to the world ;"
he wrote verses, was an excellent musician, one of the
best composers of his time ; he chose Cornelius Jansen
to paint his son's portrait when in his tenth year, and
gave his child the widest and fullest literary education.'
Let the reader try to picture this child, in the street
(Bread Street) inhabited by merchants, in this citizen-
Kke and scholarly, religious and poetical family, whose
manners were regular and their aspirations lofty, where
they set the psahns to music, and wrote madrigals in

I Matnprobatisaim&eteleemoiiTniBpervicmiun potisaimiUQnota. —
DtfenMo Siamda. Life of Milton, by Keightlej.

* ** Mj father destined me vUle yet a little child for the stady of
himune letters. "—Xi/t, 1)7 Haason, ISSB, L Gl.

VOL. n. R

242 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

honour of Oriana the queen/ where vocal music, letters,
painting, aU the adornments of the beautiful Eenaissance,
decked the sustained gravity, the hard-working honesty,
the deep Christianity of the Reformation. All Milton's
genius springs from this ; he carried the splendour of
the Eenaissance into the earnestness of the Reformation,
the magnificence of Spenser into the severity of Calvin,
and, with his family, found himself at the confluence
of the two civilisations which he combined. Before he
was ten years old he had a learned tutor, " a puritan,
who cut his hair short;" after that he went to Saint
Paul's school, then to the University of Cambridge,
that he might be instructed in " polite literature ;" and
at the age of twelve he worked, in spite of his weak
eyes and headaches, until midnight and even later.
His John the Baptist, a character resembling himself,
says:

" When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good ; myself I thought
Bom to that end, bom to promote all truth,
All righteous things." ^

At school, afterwards at Cambridge, then with his
father, he was strengthening and preparing himself with
all his power, free from all blame, and loved by all good
men; traversing the vast fields of Greek and Latin
literature, not only the great writers, but all the writers,
down to the half of the middle-age ; and studying simul-
taneously ancient Hebrew, Syriac and rabbinical He-

^ Queen Elizabeth.

• Tke Poetical Works of John Miltotif ed. Mitford, Paradise Re-
gained. Book L L 201-206.

CHAP. VL MILTON. 243

brew, French and Spanish, old English literature, all the
Italian literature, with such zeal and profit that he wrote
ItaUan and Latin verse and prose like an Italian or a
Boman ; in addition to this, music, mathematics, theo-
logy, and much besides. A serious thought regulated
this great toU. " The church, to whose service, by the
intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a
child, and in mine own resolutions : till coming to some
maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had
invaded the church, that he who would take orders
must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which
unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he
must either straight perjure, or split his faith ; I thought
it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred
office of speaking bought, and begun with servitude and
forswearing."^

He refused to be a clergyman from the same feelings
that he had wished it ; the desire and the renunciation
all sprang from the saifie source — a fibced resolve to act
nobly. Falling back into the life of a layman, he
continued to cultivate and perfect himself, studying
passionately and with method, but without pedantry
or rigour: nay, rather, after his master Spenser, in
L Allegro, U Penseroso, Comvs, he set forth in sparkling
and variegated dress the wealth of mythology, nature,
and fancy; then, sailing for the land of science and
beauty, he visited Italy, made the acquaintance of
Grotius and Galileo, sought the society of the learned,
the men of letters, the men of the world, listened to
the musicians, steeped himself in all the beauties
stored up by the Eenaissance at Florence and Eome.

^ Milton's Prose Works, ed. Mitford, 8 vols., The Reason of Church
Oovemmeni, L 150.

244 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Everywhere his learning, his fine Italian and Latin
style, secured him the friendship and attentions of
scholars, so that, on his return to Florence, he "was
as well received as if he had returned to his native
country." He collected books and music, which he
sent to England, and thought of traversing Sicily and
Greece, those two homes of ancient letters and arts.
Of all the flowers that 6pened to the Southern sun
under the influence of the two great Paganisms, he
gathered freely the balmiest and the most exquisite,
but without staining himself with the mud which
surrounded them. "I call the Deity to witness,"
he wrote later, " that in all those places in which vice
meets with so little discouragement, and is practised
with so little shame, I never once deviated from the
paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected
that, though my conduct might escape the notice of
men, it could not elude the inspection of God."^

Amid the licentious gallantries and inane sonnets
like those which the Cicisbei and Academicians
lavished forth, he retained his sublime idea of poetry :
he thought to choose a heroic subject from ancient
English history ; and as he says, " I was confirmed
in this opinion, that he who would not be frus-
trate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable
things, ought himself to be a true i)oem ; that is, a
composition and pattern of the best and honourablest
things ; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic
men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the
experience and the practice of all that which is praise-

* Milton's Prose Works (Bohn's edition, 1848), Second Defejioe of the
People of Englaridy i. 257. See also his Italian Sonnets, with their
religious sentiment.

CHAP. n. MILTON. 243

worthy."' Above all, he loved Dajite and Petrarch
for their purity, telling himself that " if unchaatity in
a woman, whom St Paul terms the glory of man, be
such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man,
who is both the im^e and glory of God, it must,
though commonly not so thought, be much more deflour-
ing and dishonourable."* He thought " that every free
and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be bom
a knight," for the practice and defence of chastity, and
he kept himself virgin tiU his marriage. Wliatever
the temptation might be, whatever the attraction or
fear, it found him equally opposed and equally firm.
From a sense of gravity and propriety he avoided all
religious disputes ; but if his own creed were attacked,
he defended it " without any reserve or fear," even in
Eome, before the Jesuits who plotted against him,
within a few paces of the Inquisition and the Vatican.
Perilous duty, instead of driving him away, attracted him.
When the Kevohition began to threaten, he returned,
drawn by conscience, as a soldier who hastens to danger
when he hears the clash of arms, convinced, as he him-
self tells us, that it was a shame to him leisurely to
spend his life abroad, and for Ms own pleasure, whilst
his fellow-countrymen were striving for their liberty.
In battle he appeared in the front ranks as a volunteer,
courting danger everywhere. Throughout his education
and throughout his youth, in his profane readings and
hia sacred studies, in his acts and his maxims, already
a ruling and permanent thought grew manifest — the re-
solution to develop and unfold within liiTn the ideal man.

' Hilton's Prote WorJa, Uitford, Apology /or Smtaymnvaa, L 270.
• Ibid. 273. See also hta TreaHat aa ZHvortt, which shows dearlj
Milton's meaning.

246 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

11.

Two powers chiefly lead mankind — impulse and
idea : the one influencing sensitive, imfettered, poetical
souls, capable of transformations, like Shakspeare; the
other governing active, combative, heroic souls, capable
of immutability, like Milton. The first are sympathetic
and effusive; the second are concentrative and resen^ed.^
The first give themselves up, the others withhold them-
selves. These, by reliance and sociability, with an
artistic instinct and a sudden imitative comprehension,
involuntarily take the tone and disposition of the men
and things which surroimd them, and an immediate
counterpoise is effected between tlie inner and the
outer man. Those, by mistrust and rigidity, with a
combative instinct and a quick reference to rule,
become naturally thrown back upon themselves, and in
their narrow limits no longer feel the solicitations and
contradictions of their surroundings. They have
formed a model, and thenceforth this model like a
watchword restrains or urges them on. Like all
powers destined to have sway, the inner idea grows
and absorbs to its use the rest of their being. They
bury it in themselves by meditation, they nourish it
with reasoning, they put it in communication with the
chain of all their doctrines and aU their experiences;
so that when a, temptation assaUs them, it is not an
isolated principle which it attacks, but it encounters

^ "Though Christianity had been but slightly taught me, yet a
certain reservedness of natural disposition and moral discipline, learnt
out of the noblest philosophy, was enough to keep me in disdain of far
less incontinences than this of the bordello. " — Apology for Smcdyrri'
nuu8, Mitford, i. 272.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 247

the whole combination of their belief, an infinitely
ramified combination, too strong for a sensuous seduc-
tion to tear asunder. At the same time a man by
habit is upon his guard; the combative attitude is
natural to him, and he stands erect, firm in the pride
of his courage and the inveteracy of his determination.
A soul thus fortified is like a diver in his bell ; ^ it
passes through life as he passes through the sea,
imstained but isolated. On his return to England,
Milton fell back among his books, and received a few
pupils, upon whom he imposed, as upon himself, con-
tinuous toil, serious reading, a frugal diet, a strict
behaviour; the life of a recluse, almost of a monk.
Suddenly, in a month, after a country visit, he married.^
A few weeks afterwards, his wife returned to her father^s
house, would not come back to him, took no notice of his
letters, and sent back his messenger with scorn. The
two characters had come into collision. Nothing dis-
pleases women more than an austere and self-contained
character. They see that they have no hold upon it ;
its dignity awes them, its pride repels, its preoccupa-
tions keep them aloof; they feel themselves of less
value, neglected for general interests or speculative
curiosities ; judged, moreover, and that after an inflex-
ible rule; at most regarded with condescension, as a
sort of less reasonable and inferior beings, debarred
from the equality which they demand, and the love
which alone can reward them for the loss of equality.
The " priest " character is made for solitude ; the tact,
ease, charm, pleasantness, and gentleness necessary to

* An expression of Jean Paul Richter. See an excellent article on
Milton in the Nat. Review^ July 1859.
' 1648, at the age of 85.

248 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

all companionship, is wanting to it; we admire him,
but we go no further, especially if, like Milton's wife,
we are somewhat dull and commonplace,^ adding
mediocrity of intellect to the repugnance of our
hearts. He had, so his biographers say, a certain
gravity of nature, or severity of mind which would
not condescend to petty tilings, but kept him in
the clouds, in a region which is not that of the house-
hold. He was accused of being harsh, choleric ; and
certainly he stood upon his manly dignity, his autho-
rity as a husband, and was not so greatly esteemed,
respected, studied, as he thouglit he deserved to be. In
short, he passed the day amongst his books, and the
rest of the time his heart lived in an abstracted and
sublime worid of which few wives catch a glimpse, his
wife least of aU. He had, in fact, chosen like a
student, so much the more at random because his
former life had been of "a well-governed and wise
appetite." Equally like a man of the closet, he
resented her flight, being the more irritated because
the world's ways were imknown to him. Without
dread of ridicule, and vriih tlie sternness of a specula-
tive man suddenly brought into collision with actual
life, he '\\Tote treatises on Divorce, signed them with
his name, dedicated them to Parbament, held himself
divorced de facto, because his wife refused to return, rfe
pire because he had four texts of Scripture for it ;

^ Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Mitford, iu 27, 29, 32. " Mute
and spiritless mate.*' ** Tlie baaliful muteness of the virgin may often-
times hide aU the nnliveliness and natnral sloth which is really nniit
for conversation." ** A man shall find himself bound fast to an image
of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a
sweet and gladsome society." A pretty woman will say in reply : I
cannot love a man who carries his head like the Sacrament.

CHAP. Ti. MILTON. ^ 249

whereupon he paid court to another young lady, and sud-
denly, seeii^ his wife on her knees and weeping, foigave
her, took her back, renewed the dry and sad marriage-
tie, not profiting hy experience, but on the other hand
&ted to contract two other Tinions, the last with a wife
thirty years younger than himself. Other parts of his
domestic Ufa were neither better managed nor happier.
He had taken his daughters for secretaries, and made
them read languages which they did not imderstand, —
a repelling task, of which they bitterly complained. In
return, he accused them of being " undutiful and un-
kind," of neglecting him, not caring whether they left
him alone, of conspiring with the ser\-ants to rob him
in their purchases, of stealing his books, so that they
would have disposed of the whole of them. Mary, the
second, hearing one day that he was going to be mar-
ried, said that bis marri^e was no news ; the best news
would he his death. An incredible speech, and one
which throws a strange light on the miseries of this
family. Neither circumstances nor nature had created
him for happiness.

III.
They had created him for strife, and after his return
to England he had thrown himself heartily into it, armed
with logic, anger, and learning, protected by conviction
and conscience. When " the liberty of speech was no
longer subject to control, all mouths began to be opened
gainst the bishops. ... I saw that a way was opening
for the establishment of real liberty ; that the founda-
tion was laying for the deliverance of man from the
yoke of slavery and superstition ; . . . and as I had
from my youtt studied the distinction between rel^ous

250 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

and civil rights, ... I determined to relinquish the
other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer
the whole force of my talents and my industry to this
one important object." ^ And thereupon he ^vrote his
Reformation in England, jeering at and attacking with
haughtiness and scorn the prelacy and its defenders.
Eefuted and attacked in turn, he became still more bitter,
and crushed those whom he had beaten.^ Transported
to the limits of his creed, and like a knight making a
rush, and who pierces with a dash the whole line of
battle, he hurled himseK upon the prince, wrote that
the abolition of royalty as well as the overthrow of
Episcopacy were necessary ; and one month after the
death of Charles I., justified liis execution, replied to
the Eikon Basilike, then to Salmasius* Defence qftlic King,
with incomparable breadth of style and scorn, like a
soldier, like an apostle, like a man who everywhere feels
the superiority of his science and logic, who wishes to
make it felt, who proudly tramples upon and crushes
his adversaries as ignoramuses, inferior minds, base
hearts.^ " Kings most commonly," he says, at the be-
ginning of the EikoiwMastes, " though strong in legions,
are but weak at arguments ; as they who ever have ac-
customed from their cradle to use their will only as
their right hand, their reason always as their left.
Whence unexpectedly constrained to that kind of com-

^ Second Defence of the People of England^ Prose Works (Bohn),
i. 257.

' Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England^ and the
Causes that hitherto have hindered it. Of Prelatical Episcopacy. The
Reason of Church Oovernmcnt urged against Prclaty : 1641. Apology
for Smectymnuus : 1642.

' The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Eilconoklastes : 1648-9.
Defensio Populi Anglicani : 1651. Defensio Secunda : 1654. Authoris
pro 86 defensio, Responsio : 1655.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 261

bat, they prove but weak and puny adversaries." ^ Yet,
for love of those who suffer themselves to be overcome
by this dazzling name of royalty, he consents to *' take
up King Charles's gauntlet," and bangs him with it in a
style calculated to make the imprudent men who had
thrown it down repent. Far from recoiling at the
accusation of murder, he accepts and boasts of it. He
vaunts the regicide, sets it on a triumphal car, decks it
in all the light of heaven. He relates with the tone
of a judge, "how a most potent king, after he had
trampled upon the laws of the nation, and given a
shock to its religion, and began to rule at his own will
and pleasure, was at last subdued in the field by his
own subjects, who had imdergone a long slavery imder
him ; how afterwards he was cast into prison, and when
he gave no ground, either by words or actions, to hope
better things of him, was finally by the supreme coimcil
of the kingdom condemned to die, and beheaded before
the very gates of the royal palace. . . . For what king's
majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so
brightly, as that of the people of England then did,
when, shaking off that old superstition, which had pre-
vailed a long time, they gave judgment upon the king
himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been their
king, caught as it were in a net by his own laws (who
alone of all mortals challenged to himself impunity by
a divine right), and scrupled not to inflict the same
punishment upon him, being guilty, which he would
have inflicted upon any other ? " ^ After having justi-
fied the execution, he sanctified it ; consecrated it by
decrees of heaven after he had authorised it by the laws

1 Milton's Prose Works, Mitford, vol i. 329.
' Ibid, Preface to the Defence of the People ofEnglandy vi. pp. 1, 2.

252 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

of the world ; from the support of Law he transferred
it to the support of God. This is the God who " uses
to throw down proud and unruly kings, . . . and
utterly to extirpate them and all their family. By his
manifest impulse being set on work to recover our al-
most lost liberty, following him as our guide, and ador-
ing the impresses of his divine power manifested upon
all occasions, we went on in no obscure but an illus-
trious passage, pointed out and made plain to us by God
himself" ^ Here the reasoning ends with a song of
triumph, and enthusiasm breaks out through the mail
of tlie warrior. Such he displayed himself in all his
actions and in all his doctrines. The solid files of
bristling and well-ordered arguments wliich he disposed
in battle-array were changed in his heart in the moment
of triumph into glorious processions of crowTied and re-
splendent hymns. He was transported by them, he de-

* Mitford, vL pp. 2-3. This "Defence" was in Latin. Milton
ends it thus : —

" He (Gotl) has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from
the two greatest mischiefs of this life, and most pernicious to virtue,
tyranny and superstition ; he has endued you with greatness of mind to
be the first of mankind, who after having conquered their own king,
and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled
to condemn him judicially, and, pursuant to that sentence of condemna-
tion, to put him to death. After the performing so glorious an action
as this, you ought to do nothing that is mean and little, not so much
as to think of, much less to do, anything but what is great and sub-
lime. \Miich to attain to, this is your only way ; as you have subdued
your enemies in the field, so to make appear, that unarmed, and in the
highest outward peace and tranquillity, you of all mankind are best
able to subdue ambition, avaric4^, the love of riches, and can best avoid
the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce (which generally
subdue and triumph over other nations), to show as great justice, tem-
perance, and moderation in the maintaining your liberty, as you have
shown coorage in freeing yourselves from slavery." — Ibid. voL vi.
251-2.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 253

luded himself, and lived thus alone with the sublime,
like a warrior-pontiff, who in his stiff armour, or his
glittering stole, stands face to face with truth. Thus
absorbed in strife and in his priesthood, he lived out
of the worid, as blind to palpable facts as he was pro-
tected against the seductions of the senses, placed above
the stains and the lessons of experience, as incapable
of leading men as of yielding to them. There was no-
thing in him akin to the devices and delays of the
statesman, the crafty schemer, who pauses on his way,
experimentalises, with eyes fixed on what may turn up,
who gauges what is possible, and employs logic for prac-
tical purposes. Milton was speculative and chimerical.
Locked up in his own ideas, he sees but them, is at-
tracted but by them. Is he pleading against the
bishops ? He would extirpate them at once, without
hesitation ; he demands that the Presb3^rian worship
shall be at once established, without forethought, con-
trivance, hesitation. It is the command of God, it is
the duty of the faithful ; beware how you trifle with
God or temporise with faith. Concord, gentleness,
liberty, piety, he sees a whole swarm of virtues issue
from this new worship. Let the king fear nothing from
it, his power will be all the stronger. Twenty thousand
democratic assemblies will take care that his rights be
not infringed. These ideas make us smile. We recog-
nise the party-man, who, on the verge of the Eestoration,
when " the whole multitude was piad with desire for a
king," published A Ready and Easy Way to estailish a
Free Commonwealth, and described his method at length.
We recognise the theorist who, to obtain a law of
divorce, only appealed to Scripture, and aimed at trans-
forming the civil constitution of a people by changing

254 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

the accepted sense of a verse. With closed eyes,
sacred text in hand, he advances from consequence to
consequence, trampling upon the prejudices, inclina-
tions, habits, wants of men, as if a reasoning or reli-
gious spirit -were the whole man, as if evidence always
created belief, as if belief always resulted in practice,
as if, in the struggle of doctrines, truth or justice gave
doctrines the victory and sovereignty. To cap all, he
sketched out a treatise on education, in which he pro-
posed to teach each pupQ every science, every art, and,
what is more, every virtue. " He who had the art and
proper eloquence . . . -might in a short space gain
them to an incredible diligence and courage, . . .
infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous
and noble ardour as would not fail to make many of
them renowned and matchless men."^ Milton had
taught for many years and at various times. A man
must be insensible to experience or doomed to illusions
who retains such deceptions after such experiences.

But his obstinacy constituted his power, and the
inner constitution, which closed his mind to instruction,
armed his heart against weaknesses. With men
generally, the source of devotion dries up when in
contact with life. Gradually, by dint of frequenting
the worid, we acquire its tone. We do not choose
to be dupes, and to abstain from the license which
others allow themselves ; we relax our youthful strict-
ness ; we even smUe, attributing it to our heated blood ;
we know our own motives, and cease to find our-
selves sublime. We end by taking it calmly, and
we see the world wag, only trying to avoid shocks,
picking up here and there a few little comfortable

1 0/EduecUion, Mitford, ii. 885.

CHAP. VL MILTON. 255

pleasures. Not so Milton. He lived complete aad
pure to the end, without loss of heart or weakness;
experience could not instruct nor misfortune depress
him ; he endured all, and repented of nothing. He
lost his sight, by his own fault, by writing, though ill,
and against the prohibition of his doctors, to justify the
English people against the invectives of Salmasius. He
saw the funeral of the Republic, the proscription of his
doctrines, the defamation of his honour. Around him
ran riot, a distaste for liberty, an enthusiasm for slavery.
A whole people threw itself at the feet of a young incap-
able and treacherous libertine. The glorious leaders of
the Puritan faith were condemned, executed, cut down
alive horn the gallows, quartered amidst insults ; others,
whom death had saved from the hangman, were dug
up and exposed on the gibbet ; others, exiles in
foreign lands, lived, threatened and attacked by royalist
bullies ; others again, more unfortunate, had sold their
cause for money and titles, and sat amid the exe-
cutioners of their former friends. The most pious and
austere citizens of England filled the prisons, or
wandered about in poverty and shame ; and gross vice,
impudently seated on the throne, rallied around it a
herd of unbridled lusts and sensualities. Milton him-
self had been constrained to hide ; his books had been
burned by the hand of the hangman ; even after the
general act of indemnity he was imprisoned ; when set
at liberty, he lived in the expectation of being
assassinated, for private fanaticism miglit seize the
weapon relinquished by public revenge. Other smaller
misfortunes came to aggravate by their stings the great
wounds which afOicted him. Confiscations, a bankruptcy,
finally, the great fire of London, had robbed him of three-

256 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

fourths of his fortune ;^ his daughters neither esteemed
nor respected him ; he sold liis books, knowing that his
family could not profit by them after his death ; and
amidst so many private and public miseries, he con-
tinued calm. Instead of repudiating what he had done,
he gloried in it : instead of being cast down, he increased
in firmness. He says, in his 2 2d sonnet:

" Cyriack, this three years day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of sight, their seeing have forgot ;
Nor to their idle orbs doth day appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven*8 hand or will, nor bate one jot
Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty's defence, my noble task ;
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content though blind, had I no other guide." ^

That thought was indeed his guide ; he was " armed in
himself," and that " breastplate of diamond "^ which had
protected him in his prime against the wounds in
battle, protected liim in his old age against the tempta-
tions and doubts of defeat and adversity.

^ A scrivener caused him to lose £2000. At the Restoration he
was refused payment of £2000 which he had put into the Excise Office,
and deprived of an estate of £50 a year, bought by him from the pro-
perty of the Chapter of Westminster. His house in Bread Street was
burnt in the great fire. When he died he is said to have left about
£1500 in money (equivalent to about £5000 now), besides household
goods. [I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Masson for the
collation of this note. — Tr.]
' Milton's Poetical Works, Mitford, L Sonnet xxii. ^ Jtalian Sonnets,

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 257

IV.

Milton lived in a small house in London, or in the
country, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, published his
History of Britain, his Logic, a Treatise on True Religion
and Heresy, meditated his great Treatise on Christian
Doctrine. Of aU consolations, work is the most
fortifying and the most healthy, because it solaces a
man not by bringing him ease, but by requiring him
to exert himself. Every morning he had a chapter
of the Bible read to him in Hebrew, and remained for
some time in silence, grave, in order to meditate on
what he had heard. He never went to a place of
worship. Independent in religion as in all else, he was
suflScient to himself ; finding in no sect the marks of
the true church, he prayed to God alone, without need-
ing others* help. He studied till mid-day ; then, after
an hour's exercise, he played the organ or the bass- violin.
Then he resumed his studies till six, and in the even-
ing enjoyed the society of his friends. When any one
came to visit him, he was usually found in a room
hung with old green hangings, seated in an arm-chair,
and dressed neatly in black ; his complexion was pale,
says one of his visitors, but not sallow ; his hands and
feet were gouty ; his hair, of a light brown, was parted
in the midst and fell in long curls ; his eyes, grey and
dear, showed no sign of blindness. He had been very
beautiful in his youth, and his English cheeks, once
delicate as a young girl's, retained their colour almost
to the end. His face, we are told, was pleasing; his
straight and manly gait bore witness to intrepidity and
couiage. Something great and proud breathes out yet
from all his portraits; and certainly few men have

VOL n. 8

258 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

done so much honour to their kind. Thus went out this
noble life, like a setting sun, bright and calm. Amid
so many trials, a pure and lofty joy, altogether worthy
of him, had been granted to him : the poet, buried
under the Puritan, had reappeared, more sublime than
ever, to give to Christianity its second Homer. The
dazzling dreams of his youth and the reminiscences of
his ripe age were found in him, side by side with
Calvinistic dogmas and the visions of Saint John,
to create the Protestant epic of damnation and grace ;
and the vastness of primitive horizons, the flames of
the infernal dimgeon, the splendours of the celestial
court, opened to the inner eye of the soul unknown
regions beyond the sights which the eyes of the flesh
had lost

V.

I have before me the formidable volume in which,
some time after Milton's death, liis prose works were
collected.^ Wliat a book ! The chairs creak when you
place it upon them, and a man who had turned its
leaves over for an hour, would have less pain in his
head than in his arm. As the book, so were the men ;
from the mere outsides we might gather some notion of
the controversialists and theologians whose doctrines
they contain. Yet we must conclude that the author
was eminently learned, elegant, travelled, philosophic,
and a man of the world for his age. We think invol-

^ 3 vols, folio, 1697-8. The titles of Milton's chief writings in
prose are these : — Of Itefomnation in England ; The Reason of Church
Oovemmcnt urged against Prclaiy ; Animoiivcrsions upon the Remon-
strants' Defence; Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; Tetrachordon ;
Tractate on Education ; Arec>pagitica ; Tenure of Kings and Magis-
trates ; Eikonoklastcs ; Uistory of Britain ; Defence of the People of
England.

^

CHAP. VL MILTON. 259

untarily of the portraits of the theologians of those
days, sevei^ faces engraved on metal by the hard artists'
tool, whose square brows and steady eyes stand out
in startling prominence against a dark oak panel
We compare them to modem countenances, in which
the delicate and complex features seem to quiver at
the varied contact of hardly begun sensations and innu-
merable ideas. We try to imagine the heavy classical
education, the physical exercises, the rude treatment,
the rare ideas, the imposed dogmas, which formerly
occupied, oppressed, fortified, and hardened the young ;
and we might fancy ouraelves looking at an anatomy of
megatheria and mastodons, reconstructed by Cuvier.

The race of living men is changed. Our mind fails
us now-a-days at the idea of this greatness and this bar-
barism ; but we discover that the barbarism was then the
cause of the greatness. As in other times we might have
seen, in the primitive slime and among the colossal ferns,
ponderous monsters slowly wind their scaly backs, and
tear the flesh from one another's sides with their mis-
shapen talons ; so now, at a distance, from the height of
our calm civilisation, we see the battles of the theologians,
who, armed with syllogisms, bristling with texts, covered
one another with filth, and laboured to devour each other.

Milton fought in the front rank, pre-ordained to
barbarism and greatness by his individual nature and
the manners of the time, capable of displaying in high
prominence the logic, style, and spirit of his age. It
is drawing-room life which trims men into shape : the
society of ladies, tlie lack of serious interests, idleness,
vanity, security, are needed to bring men to elegance,
urbanity, fine and light humour, to teach the desire to
please, the fear to become wearisome, a perfect clearness,

260 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

a finished precision, the art of gradual transitions and
delicate tact, a taste for suitable images, continual ease,
and choice diversity. Seek nothing like this in Milton.
The old scholastic system was not far off; it still
weighed on those who were destroying it. Under this
secular armour discussion proceeded pedantically, with
measured steps. The first thing was to propound a
thesis; and Milton Avrites, in large characters, at the
head of his Treatise oii IXvorce, " that indisposition, imfit-
ness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in
nature unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to
hinder the main benefits of conjugal society, which are
solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than
natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and
that there be mutual consent." And then follow, legion
after legion, the disciplined army of the arguments.
Battalion after battalion they pass by, numbered very
distinctly. There is a dozen of them together, each
with its title in clear characters, and the little brigade
of subdivisions which it commands. Sacred texts hold
the post of honour. Every word of them is discussed,
the substantive after the adjective, the verb after the
substantive, the preposition after the verb ; interpreta-
tions, authorities, illustrations, are simimoned up, and
ranged between palisades of new diAdsions. And yet
there is a lack of order, the question is not reduced to
a single idea ; we cannot see our way ; proofs succeed
proofs without logical sequence ; we are rather tired out
than convinced. We remember that the author speaks
to Oxford men, lay or cleric, trained in pretended dis-
cussions, capable of obstinate attention, accustomed to
digest indigestible books. They are at home in this
thorny thicket of scholastic brambles ; they beat a path

\

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 261

through, somewhat at hazard, hardened against the hurts
which repulse us, and not having the smallest idea of
the daylight which we require everywhere now.

With such ponderous reasoners, you must not look
for wit. Wit is the nimbleness of victorious reason ;
here, because everything is powerful, all is heavy.
When Milton wishes to joke, he looks like one of
Cromwell's pikemen, who, entering a room to dance,
should fall upon the floor, and that with the extra weight
of his armour. Few things could be more stupid than his
Animadversions upon the Bemonstrants* Defence, At the
end of an argument his adversary concludes with this
specimen of theological wit: "In the meanwhile see,
brethren, how you have with Simon fished aU night,
and caught nothing." And ]VIilton boastfully replies :
" If we, fishing with Simon the apostle, can catch nothing;
see what you can catch with Simon Magus ; for all his
hooks and fishing implements he bequeathed among you."
Here a great savage laugh would break out. The spec-
tators saw a charm in this way of insinuating that his
adversary was simoniacaL A little before, the latter
says : " Tell me, is this liturgy good or evil ? " Answer :
" It is evil : repair the acheloian horn of your dilemma,
how you can, against the next push." The doctors
wondered at the fine mythological simile, and rejoiced
to see the adversary so neatly compared to an ox, a
beaten ox, a pagan ox. On the next page the Eemon-
strant said, by way of a spiritual and mocking reproach :
" Truly, brethren, you have not well taken the heighth
of the pole." Answer : " No marvel ; there be many
more that do not take well the height of your pole,
but will take better the declination of your altitude."
Three quips of the same savour follow one upon the

262 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

other; all this looked pretty. Elsewhere, Salmasius
exclaiming " that the sun itself never beheld a more
outrageous action" than the murder of the king,
Milton cleverly answers, "The sun has beheld many
things that blind Bernard never saw. But we are con-
tent you should mention the sun over and over. And
it will be a piece of prudence in you so to do. For
though our wickedness does not require it, the coldness
of the defence that you are making does." ^ The marvel-
lous heaviness of these conceits betrays minds yet
entangled in the swaddling-clothes of learning. The
Reformation was the inauguration of free thought, but
only the inauguration. Criticism was yet imbom ;
authority still presses with a full half of its weight
upon tlie freest and boldest minds. Milton, to prove
that it was lawful to put a king to death, quotes
Orestes, the laws of Publicola, and the death of Nero.
His History of Britain is a farrago of all the traditions
and fables. Under every circumstance he adduces a
text of Scripture for proof; his boldness consists in
showing himself a bold grammarian, a valorous com-
mentator. He is blindly Protestant as others were
blindly Catholic. He leaves in its bondage the higher
reason, tlie mother of principles ; he has but emancipated
a subordinate reason, an interpreter of texts. Like the
vast half shapeless creatures, the birth of early times,
he is yet but half man and half mud.

Can we expect urbanity here? Urbanity is the
elegant dignity which answers insult by calm irony,
and respects man whilst piercing a dogma. Milton
coarsely knocks his adversary down. A bristling ped-
ant, bom from a Greek lexicon and a Syriac grammar,

* A Dcfenu oflhe People of England^ Mitford vi. 21.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 263

Sahnasius had disgorged upon the English people a
vocabulary of insults and a folio of quotations. Milton
replies to him in the same style ; calling him a buffoon,
a mountebank, ** professor triobolaris*' a hired pedant, a
nobody, a rogue, a heartless being, a wretch, an idiot,
sacrilegious, a slave worthy of rods and a pitchfork
A dictionary of big Latin words passed between them.
" You, who know so many tongues, who read so many
books, who write so much about them, you are yet but
an ass." Finding the epithet good, he repeats and
sanctifies it. " Oh most drivelling of asses, you come
ridden by a woman, with the cured heads of bishops
whom you had wounded, a little image of the great
beast of the Apocalypse!" He ends by calling him
savage beast, apostate, and deviL " Doubt not that you
are reserved for the same end as Judas, and that,
driven by despair rather than repentance, self-disgusted,
you must one day hang yourself, and like your rival,
burst asimder in your belly." ^ We fancy we are listen-
ing to the bellowing of two bulls.

They had all a bull's ferocity. Milton was a good
hater. He fought with his pen, as the Ironsides with
the sword, inch by inch, with a concentrated rancour and
a fierce obstinacy. The bishops and the king then
suffered for eleven years of despotism. Each man re-
called the banisliments, confiscations, punishments, the

^ Mitford, vi 250. Salmasius said of the death of the king :
" Horribilis nuntius aures nostras atroci vnlnere, sed magis men tea
perculit." Milton replied : " Profecto nuntius iste horribilis aut
gladinm multo longiorem eo quern strinxit Petrus habuerit oportet, aut
aores istse auritissimse fuerint, quas tam longiuquo vulnere perculerit.*'

" Oratorem tam insipidum et insulsum ut ne ex lacrymis quidem
ejus mica salis exiguissima possit exprimi. "

"Salmasius nova quadam metamorphosi salmacis factus est"

264 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

law violated systematically and relentlessly, the liberty
of the subject attacked by a well-laid plot, Episcopal
idolatry imposed on Christian consciences, the faithful
preachers driven into the wilds of America, or given up
to the executioner and the stocks.^ Such reminiscences

* I copy from Neal's History of ike Puritans^ ii. ch. viL 367, one
of these sorrows and complaints. By the greatness of the outrage the
reader can judge of the intensity of the hatred : —

" The humble |>etition of (Dr.) Alexander Leighton, Prisoner in the
Fleet, — Humbly Sheweth,

"Tliat on Feb. 17, 1630, he was apprehended coming from sermon
by a high commission warrant, and dragge<l along the street with bills
and staves to London-house. That the gaoler of Newgate being sent
for, clapt him in irons, and carried him with a strong power into a
loathsome and niinous dog-hole, full of rats and mice, that had no light
but a little grate, and the roof being uncovered, the snow and rain beat
in upon him, having no bedding, nor place to make a fire, but the
ruins of an old smoaky chimney. In this woeful place he was shut up
for fifteen weeks, nobody being suffered to come near him, till at length
his wife only was admitted. . That the fourth day after his commit-
ment the pursuivant, with a mighty multitude, came to his house to
search for Jesuits books, and used his wife in such a barbarous and
inhuman manner as he is ashamed to express ; that they rifled every
person and place, holding a pistol to the breast of a child of five years
old, threatening to kill him if he did not discover the books ; that they
broke open chests, presses, boxes, and carried away everything, even
household stuff, apparel, arms, and other things ; that at the end of
fifteen weeks he was served with a subpoina, on an information laid
against him by Sir Robert Heath, attorney-general, whose dealing with
him was full of cruelty and deceit ; but he was then sick, and, in the
opinion of four physicians, thouglit to be poisoned, because all his hair
and skin came off ; that in the height of this sickness the cruel sentence
was passed upon him mentioned in the year 1630, and executed Nov.
26 following, when he received thirty-six stripes upon his naked back
with a threefold cord, his hands being tied to a stake, and then stood
almost two hours in the pillory in the frost and snow, before he was
branded in the face, his nose slit, and his ears cut off; that after this
he was carried by water to the Fleet, and shut up in such a room that
he was never well, and after eight years was turned into the common
gaol."

OHAP. VL MILTON. 265

arising in powerful minds, stamped them with inexpiable
hatred, and the writings of Milton bear witness to a
rancour which is now maknown. The impression left
by his Eihmoklastes^ is oppressive. Phrase by phrase,
harshly, bitteriy, the king is refuted and accused to the
last, without a minute's respite of accusation, the ac-
cused being credited with not the slightest good inten-
tion, the slightest excuse, the least show of justice, the
accuser never for an instant digressing to or resting up-
on a general idea. It is a hand-to-hand fight, where
every word takes effect, prolonged, obstinate, without
dash and without weakness, full of a harsh and fixed
hostility, where the only thought is how to wound most
severely and to kill surely. Against the bishops, who
were alive and powerful, his hatred flowed more violently
still, and the fierceness of his envenomed metaphors
hardly sufiices to express it Milton points to them
" basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and pro-
motion," like a brood of foul reptiles. "The sour
leaven of human traditions, mixed in one putrified mass
with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisie in the hearts of
Prelates, ... is the serpent's egg that will hatch an
antichrist wheresoever, and ingender the same monster
as big or little as the lump is which breeds him.""

So much coarseness and dulness was as an outer
breastplate, the mark and the protection of the super-
abundant force and life which coursed in those athletic
limbs and chests. Now-a-days, the mind being more
refined has become feebler ; convictions, being less stem,
have become less strong. Attention, freed from the
heavy scholastic logic and scriptural tyranny, has be-

> An aniwer to the EUccn BatUike, a work on the king's dde, and
•ttributed to the king. " 0/ JU/ormation in England, tta,Hil, p. 82.

266 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

come more inert. Belief and the will, dissolved hy
universal tolerance and by the thousand opposing shocks
of multiplied ideas, have engendered an exact and refined
style, an instrument of conversation and pleasure, and
have expelled the poetic and rude style, a weapon of
war and enthusiasm. If we have effaced ferocity and
dulness, we have diminished force and greatness.

Force and greatness are manifested in MUton, dis-
played in his opinions and his style, the sources of his
belief and his talent. This proud reason aspired to
imfold itself without shackles; it demanded that
reason might unfold itself without shackles. It claimed
for humanity what it coveted for itself, and championed
every liberty in his every work. From the first he
attacked the corpulent bishops, scholastic upstarts,
persecutors of free discussion, pensioned tyrants of
Christian conscience.^ Above the clamour of the
Protestant Revolution, his voice was heard thundering
against tradition and obedience. He sourly railed at
the pedantic theologians, devoted worshippers of old
texts, who mistook a mouldy martyrology for a solid
argument, and answered a demonstration with a quota-
tion. He declared that most of the Fathers were
turbulent and babbling intriguers, that they were not
worth more collectively than individually, that their
councils were but a pack of underhand intrigues and
vain disputes; he rejected their authority and their
example, and set up logic as the only interpreter of
Scripture.^ A Puritan as against bishops, an Independ-
ent as against Presbyterians, he was always master

^ 0/ Reformation in England.

' The loss of Cicero's works alone, or those of Livy, could not be
repaired by all the Fathers of the church.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 267

of his thought and the inventor of his own faith. No
one better loved, practised, and praised the free and
bold use of reason. He exercised it even rashly and
scandalously. He revolted against custom, the illegiti-
mate queen of human belief, the bom and relentless
enemy of truth, raised his haaid against marriage, and
demanded divorce in the case of incompatibility of
temper. He declared that " error supports custom,
custom countenances error; and these two between
them, . . . with the numerous and vulgar train of
their followers, . . . envy and cry down the industry
of free reasoning, under the terms of humour and inno-
vation." ^ He showed that truth " never comes into
the world, but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him
that brought her forth ; till Time, the midwife rather
than the mother of truth, have washed and salted the
infant, declared her legitimate."^ He stood out in
three or four writings against the flood of insults and
anathemas, and dared even more; he attacked the
censorship before Parliament, though its own work ; he
spoke as a man who is wounded and oppressed, for whom
a public prohibition is a personal outrage, who is himself
fettered by the fetters of the nation. He does not want
the pen of a paid " licenser," to insult by its approval the
first page of his book. He hates this ignorant and
imperious hand, and claims liberty of writing on the
same groimds as he claims liberty of thought : —

" What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at
school, if we have only escaped the ferula, to come under the
fescue of an imprimatur ? If serious and elaborate writings, as
if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under
his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of

^ Lodrine and Diaciplint ofDivorUy Mitford, ii. 4. ^ Ibid, 5.

268 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

a temporizing and extemporizing licenser l' He who ia not
trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be
evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great
argument to think himself reputed in the commonwealth where-
in he was bom for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a
man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and
deliberation to assist him ; he searches, meditates, is industrious,
and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends ; after
all which done, he takes himself to be informed in what he
writes, as well as any that wrote before him ; if in this, the
most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no
industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that
state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless
he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings,
and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured
licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in
judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book
writing ; and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear
in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hand on
the back of his title to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot
or seducer ; it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the
author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning." ^

Throw opeu, then, all the doors ; let there be light ;
let every uian thiuk, and bring his thoughts to the
light. Dread not any diveraities of opinion, rejoice in
tliis great work ; why insult the labourers by the name
of schismatics and sectaries ?

" Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and
sectaries, as if, wliile the temple of the Lord was building, some
cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars,
there should be a sort of irrational men, who could not consider
there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the
quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be built.

^ Areopagitica, J^Iitford, iL 423-4.

^

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 269

And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be
united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world :
neither can every piece of the building be of one form ; nay,
rather the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate
varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly dispro-
portional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that com-
mends the whole pile and structure." ^

Milton triumphs here through sympathy ; he breaks
forth into magnificent images, he displays in his style
the force which he perceives around him and in himself.
He lauds the revolution, and his praises seem like the
blast of a trumpet, to come from a brazen throat : — -

" Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-
house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection;
the shop of war has not there more anvils and hammers working,
to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in
defence of beleagured truth, than there be pens and heads there,
sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new
notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and
their feality, the approaching reformation. . . . What could a
man require more from a nation so pliant, and so prone to seek
after knowledge ? What wants there to such a towardly and
pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing
people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies 1 ^ . . .
Methinks I see in mv mind a noble and puissant nation rousing
herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible
locks : methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth,
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam;
purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain
itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous
and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter
about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble
would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms/' ^

^ AreopagUica, Mitford, ii. 439. > Ibid, 437-8. > Bid. 441.

270 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

It is Milton who speaks, and it is Milton whom he
unwittingly describes.

With a sincere writer, doctrines foretell the style.
The sentiments and needs which form and govern his
beliefs, construct and colour his phrases. The same
genius leaves once and again the same impress, in the
thought and in the form. The power of logic and
enthusiasm which explains the opinions of Milton, ex-
plains his genius. The sectary and the writer are one
man, and we shall find the faculties of the sectary in the
talent of the writer.

When an idea is planted in a logical mind, it grows
and fructifies there in a multitude of accessory and ex-
planatory ideas which surround it, entangled among
themselves, and form a tliicket and a forest. The
sentences in MUton are inunense ; page-long periods are
necessary to enclose the train of so many linked argu-
ments, and so many metaphors accumulated around
the governing thought. In this great travaU, heart
and imagination are shaken; Milton exults while he
reasons, and the words come as from a catapult, doubling
the force of their flight by their heavy weight. I dare
not place before a modern reader the gigantic periods
which commence the treatise Of RrfornuUhn in Eng-
land. We no longer possess this power of breath ; we
only imderstand little short phrases ; we cannot fix our
attention on the same point for a page at a time. We
require manageable ideas ; we have given up the big
two-handed sword of our fathers, and we only carry a
light foil. I doubt, however, if the piercing pliraseology
of Voltaire be more mortal than the cleaving of tliis
iron mace : —

^' If in less noble and ahnost meclianick arts he is not

^

CHAP. TL MILTON. 271

esteemed to deeerre the name of a compleat architect, an excel-
lent painter, or the like, that bears not a generous mind above
the peasantly regard of wages and hire ; much more must we
think him a most imperfect tmd incompleat Divine, who is so
tar from being a contemner of filthy lucre ; that his whole
divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly and brutish
hopes of a lat piebendaiy, deaneiy, or bisboprick." >

If Michael Angelo's prophets could speak, it would
be in this style ; and twenty times while reading it,
we may discern the sculptor.

The powerful logic which lengthens the periods
sustains the images. If Shakspeare and the nervous
poets embrace a picture in the compass of a Seeting
expression, break upon their metaphors with new ones,
and exhibit successively in the same phrase the same
idea in five or six different forms, the abrupt motion of
their winged imagination authorises or explains these
varied colours and these mingling flashes. More con-
nected and more master of himself, Milton develops to
the end the threads which these poeta break. All his
images display themselves in little poems, a sort of solid
all^ory, of which all the interdependent parts concen-
trate their light on the single idea which they are
intended to embellish or demonstrate : —

" In this manner the prelates, . . . coming from a mean and
plebeian life on a sudden to be lords of stately palaces, rich
furniture, delicious fare, and princely attendance, thought the
[dain and homespun verity of Christ's gospel unfit any longer to
hold their lordships' acquaintance, unless the poor threadbare
matron were put into better clothes : her chaste and modest
veU suiTOunded with celestial beams, they overlaid with wanton
traasee, and in a flaring tire bespeckled her with all the 'gaudy
allurements of a wbore." °

' Animadvenimu upon RemoTutranU' Defenee, tSUford, i. 231-5.
■ 0/£e/orvtatimi in England, first Look, Mitford, L 23.

272 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

PoKticians reply that this gaudy church supports royalty.

"What greater debasement can there be to royal dignity,
whose towering and steadfast height rests upon the unmoTable
foundations of justice, and heroic virtue, than to chain it in a de-
pendence of subsisting, or ruining, to the painted battlements
and gaudy rottenness of prelatry, which want but one puflf of
the king's to blow them down like a pasteboard house built of
court-cards ? " ^

Metaphors thus sustained receive a singular breadth,
pomp, and majesty. They are spread forth without
clashing together, like the wide folds of a scarlet cloak,
bathed in light and fringed with gold.

Do not take these metaphors for an accident.
Milton lavishes them, like a priest who in his worship
exhibits splendours and wins the eye, to gain the heart
He has been nourished by the reading of Spenser.
Drayton, Shakspeare, Beaumont, all the most sparkling
poets ; and the golden flow of the preceding age, though
impoverished all around him and slackened within him-
self, has become enlarged like a lake through being
dammed up in his heart. Like Shakspeare, he imagines
at every turn, and even out of turn, and scandalises
the classical and French taste.

"... As if they could make God earthly and fleshly,
because they could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual ;
they began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God
and the soul, yea, the very shape of God himself, into an ex-
terior and bodily form ; . . . they hallowed it, they fiuned up
they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency,
but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in
palls and mitres, and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe,

1 Of Ee/ortnation in England, second book, Mitford, i 42.

CHAP. VL MILTON. 273

OT the flaminB Testiy : then vaa tho priest set to con his
motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the
Boul by this means, of overbodying herself, given up justly to
fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward ; aiid finding the
ease she had from her Tiathle and sensuous colleague the body,
in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken, and
flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any
more, forgot her heavenly flight, and lefl the dull and droiling
carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of out-
ward conformity."'

If we did not discern here the traces of theological
coarsenesa, we might fancy we were reading an imitator
of tlie Fhasdo, and under the fanatical anger recognise
the images of Plato. There ia one phrase wliich for !
manly heauty and enthusiasm recalls the tone of the
Sepvblic : — " I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered .'
virtue unexercised and unhreathed, that never sallies
out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race '
where that immortal garland is to he run for, not with-
out dust and heat." ^ But Milton is only Platonic by
his richness and exaltation. For the rest, he is a man
of the Senaissance, pedantic and harsh ; he insults the
Pope, who, after the gift of Pepin le Bref, " never ceased
baiting and goring the successors of his best lord
Constantine, what by his harking curses and excommuni-
cations ;'" he is mythological in his defence of the press,
showing that formerly " no envious Juno sat cross-legged
over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring." *
It matters little : these learned, familiar, grand im^es,
whatever they he, are powerful and natural Super-

' ClfSe/onnatwa in England, book fint, Mitfocd, L 3.

■ Ara^tagaica, ii. 111-12.

• 0/ JCe/ormalUm in Enghnd, book second, 40.

* Areopoffitica, ii. 106. " Wliatsoerer time, or tho beedlees hand or
TOL. n. T

274 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

abundance, like crudity, here only manifests the vigour
and lyric dash which Milton's character had foretold.

Passion follows naturally ; exaltation brings it with
the images. Bold expressions, exaggeration of style,
cause us to hear the ^^brating voice of the sufiFering man,
indignant and determined.

" For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain
a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose
progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest
efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those
fjEibulous dragon's teeth : and being sown up and down, may
chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand,
unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good
book ; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, Gk)d's image ;
but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the
image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a
burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life-blood
of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a
life beyond life. It is true, no age can restore a life, whereof
perhaps there is no great loss ; and revolutions of ages do not oft
recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole
nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what
persecution we raise against the living labours of public men,
how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up
in books ; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus commit-
ted, sometimes a martyrdom ; and if it extend to the whole im-
pression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not
in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal
and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an im-
mortality rather than a life." ^

blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present, in her hnge
drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, onchosen,
those are the fathers.*' (Of Prelatical Episcopacy y Mitford, L 78.)
' Areopagiiioa^ Und, iL 400.

CHAP. Ti. MILTOK. 275

This energy is sublime ; the man is equal to the cause,
and never did a loftier eloquence match a loftier truth.
Terrible expressions overwhelm the book-tyrauta, the
profaners of thought, the assassins of liberty. " The
council of Trent aad the Spanish inquisition, engender-
ing together, brought forth or perfected those catal(^es
and expurging indexes, that rake through the entrails
of many an old good author, with a violation worse than
any that could be offered to his tomb." ' Similar ex-
pressions lash the carnal minds which believe without
thinking, and make their servility into a religion.
There is a passage which, by its bitter familiarity, recalls
Swift, and surpasses him in aU. loftiness of imagination
and genius: —

" A man may be an heretic ia the tmth, and if he believes
things only becaiue his pastor Bays lo, . . . the veiy truth he
holds becomes his heresy. ... A wealthy man, addicted to his
pleasure and to hie profits, finds reli^pon to be a traffic bo en-
tangled, and of 80 manj piddling accounts, that of all mysteries
he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. . . ,
What does he therefore, but resolves to give over toiling, and to
find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may
commit the whole managing of his religious affairs ; some divine
of note and estimation that must be. To him he adheres,
resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks
and keys, into his custody ; and indeed makes the very person
of that man his religion. ... So that a man maj say his reli--
gion is now no more witbiu himself, but is become a dividual
movable, and goes and comes near him, according as that good
man frequents the bouse. He entartuns him, gives him gifts,
feasts him, lodges him ; his religion comes home at night, prays,
is liberally supped, tmd samptuonsly lud to sleep; rises, is
saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced bruage, . . .
' AreepagiUtOi Mitfoid, ii. Wi.

276 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind enter-
tainer in the shop trading all day without his religion." ^

He condescended to mock for an instant, with what
piercing irony we have seen. But irony, piercing as
it may be, seems to him weak.^ Hear him when he
comes to himself, when he returns to open and serious
invective, when after the carnal believer he overwhelms
the carnal prelate : —

''The table of communion, now become a table of separa-
tion, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the
quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado, to keep off the
profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited
priest scruples not to paw and mammoc the sacramental bread,
as familiarly as his tavern biscuit." ^

He triumphs in believing that all these profanations are
to be avenged. The horrible doctrine of Calvin has
once more fixed men's gaze on the dogma of reprobation
and everlasting damnation. HeU in hand, Milton,
menaces ; he is drunk with justice and vengeance amid
the abysses which he opens, and the brands which he
wields : —

'^ They shall be thrown downe eternally into the darkest and
deepest Gulfe of Hell, where, under the despightfuU controiUe,
the trample and spume of all the other Damned, that in the
anguish of their Torture shall have no other ease than to exercise
a Raving and Bestiall Tyranny over them as their Slaves and

, * Areapagitica, Mitford ii. 431-2.

; * Wlien he is simply comic, he becomes, like Hogarth and Swift,
' eccentric, rude, and farcicaL "A bishop's foot that has all his toes,
maugre the gout, ami a linen sock over it, is the aptest emblem of the
prelate himself ; who, being a pluralist, may, under one siu-plice, which
is also linen, hide four benefices, besides the great metropolitan toe.'* —
An Apology t etc. , i. 275.

' Of ReformaLicn in, JSngland, Mitford, L 17.

■k

Negroni, they ehall remaine in that plight fi>r erer, the baxtt,
the lowemuKt, the most dejected, moat under/ool, and doume-
troddert Vaaaalt of Perdition}

Fury here mounts to the sublime, and Michael Angelo's
Ctirist 13 not more inexorable and vengeful

Let us fill the measure ; let us add, as be does, tbs
prospects of heaven to .the visions of darkuesa; the
pamphlet becomes a hymn :

" When I recall to mind at last, after bo many dark ages,
wherein the huge overshadowing traia of error had almost
swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church ; how
the bright and blissful Befonnation (by divine power) struck
through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-
christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must
needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears ; and the
sweet odour of tbe returning gospel imbathe his soul with the
fragrancy of heaven." ^

Overloaded with ornaments, infinitely prolonged, these
periods are triumphant choruses of angelic alleluias
sung hy deep voices to the accompaniment of ten thou-
sand harps of gold. In the midst of his syllogisms,
MiltoD prays, sustained by the accent of the prophets,
surrounded by memories of tlie Bible, ravished with the
splendours of the Apocalypse, but checked on the brink
of hallucination by science and logic, on the summit
of the calm clear atmosphere, without rising to the
burning tracts where ecstasy dissolves reason, with a
majesty of eloquence and a solemn grandeur never
surpassed, whose perfection proves that he has entered
his domain, and gives promise of the poet beyond the
prose-writer : —

' Of Rtfarmatim in EH^mtd, Uitford, L 71. [The old ■pelUog
baa lieen retained in this pamage. — Ta.] * Ibid. 4.

278 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

" Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and glory tmappToach-
able, parent of angels and men ! next, thee I implore, omni-
potent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature
thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love ! and thou,
the third subsistence of divine infinitude, illumining Spirit,
the joy and solace of created things ! one Tri-personal €k)dhead !
look upon this thy poor and almost spent and expiring church.
. . . let them not bring about their damned designs, . . .
to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where
we shall never more see the sun of thy truth again, never hope
for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning
sing." ^

" Thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the
Father, . . . Who is there that cannot trace thee now in thy
beamy walk through the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst those
golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness amongst
us through the violence of those that had seized them, and
were more taken with the mention of their gold than of their
starry light ? . . . Come therefore, thou that hast the seven
stars in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen priests according to
their orders and courses of old, to minister before thee, and
duly to press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy
and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of
prayer upon thy servants over all the land to this effect, and
stirred up their vows as the sound of many waters about thy
throne. ... perfect and accompUsh thy glorious acts ! . . .
Come forth out of thy royal chambers, Prince of all the kings
of the earth ! put on the visible robes of thy imperial m^esty,
take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father
hath bequeathed thee ; for now the voice of thy bride calls
thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed." ^

This song of supplication and joy is an outpouring of

^ Of Reformation in England^ lilitford, i. 68-69.
^ Animadversions, etc., ibid. 220-2.

^

CHAP. Ti. MILTON. 279

Bplendotus ; and if ve search all literature, ve wiU
haidly find a poet eqiial to this 'writer of prose.

Is he truly a prose-writer? Entangled dialectics,
a heavy and awkwaid nund, fanatical and ferocious
rusticity, an. epic grandeur of sustained and supers
abundant images, the blast and the recklessness of
implacable and all-powerful passion, the sublimity of
rel%iou3 and lyric exaltation ; ve do not recognise in
these features a man bom to explain, persuade, and
prove. The acholasticism and coarseness of the time
have blunted or rusted his Ic^c. Imagination and
enthusiaam carried him away and enchained him in
metaphor. Thus dazzled or marred, he could not pro-
duce a perfect work ; he did but write useful tracts,
called forth by practical interests and actual bate, and
fine isolated morsels, inspired by collision with a
grand idea, and by the sudden burst of genius.
Yet, in all these abandoned fragments, the man shows
in hia entirety. The systematic and lyric spirit is
manifested in the pamphlet as well as in the poem ;
the faculty of embracing general effects, and of being
shaken by them, remains the same in Milton's two
careers, and we will see in the Paradise and Comua
what we have met with in the treatise Of Reformation,
and in the Animadversions on the Renumstrant.

VI.
"Milton has acknowledged to me," writes Drydeo,
" that Spencer was his original" In fact, by t^e
purity and elevation of their morals, by the fulness and
connection of their style, by the noble chivahlc senti-
ments, and their fine classical arrangement, th^ are

280 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

brothers. But Milton had yet other masters — ^Beaumont,
Fletcher, Burton, Drummond, Ben Jonson, Shakspeare,
the whole splendid English Renaissance, and behind it
the Italian poesy, Latin antiquity, the fine Greek
literature, and all the sources whence the English
Renaissance sprang. He continued the great current,
but in a manner of his own. He took their mythology,
their allegories, sometimes their conceits,^ and dis-
covered anew their rich colouring, their magnificent
sentiment of living nature, their inexhaustible admira-
tion of forms and colours. But, at the same time, he
transformed their diction, and employed poetry in a
new ser\dce. He wrote, not by impulse, and at the
mere contact with things, but like a man of letters, a
classic, in a scholarlike manner, with the assistance of
books, seeing objects as much through previous writings
as in themselves, adding to his images the images
of others, borrowing and re-casting their inventions, €is
an artist who unites and multiplies the bosses and
driven gold, already entwined on a diadem by twenty
workmen. He made thus for himself a composite
and brilliant style, less natural than that of liis pre-
cursors, less fit for effusions, less akin to the lively first
glow of sensation, but more solid, more regular, more
capable of concentrating in one large patch of light all
their sparkle and splendour. He brings together like
-^chylus, words of " six cubits," plumed and decked
in purple, and makes them pass like a royal train before
his idea to exalt and announce it. He introduces to us

" The breathing roses of the wood,
Fair silver-buBkin'd nymphs ; " ^

* See the Hymn on the Nativity ; amongst others, the first few
strophes. See also Lycidas, ' Arcades, I. 82.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 281

and tells how

" The gray-hooded Even,
Like a sad votarist in palmer's weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain ; " ^

and speaks of

" All the sea-girt isles.
That, like to rich and various gems, inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep ; " ^

and

" That undisturbed song of pure concent,
Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne.
To Him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout, and solemn jubilee ;
Where the bright Seraphim, in burning row.
Their loud-uplifbed angel-trumpets blow." ^

He gathered into full nosegays the flowers scattered
through the other poets :

" Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks ;
Throw hither aU your quaint enamelFd eyes.
That on the green turf suck the honied showers.
And purple aU the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine.
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet.
The glowing violet.

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine.
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

1 Comus, I 188-190. • Ibid, I. 21-23.

' 0(U at a Solemn Music, I, 6-11.

282 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed.
And daffadillies All their cups with tears,
To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies." ^

When still quite young, on his quitting Cambridge, he
inclined to the magnificent and grand; he wanted a
great flowing verse, an ample and sounding strophe,
vast periods of fourteen and four-and-twenty lines. He
did not face objects on a level, as a mortal, but from on
high, like those archangels of Goethe,^ who embrace at
a glance the whole ocean lashing its coasts and the
earth rolling on, wrapt in the harmony of the frater-
nal stars. It was not life that he felt, like the masters
of the Eenaissance, but grandeur, like ^Eschylus, and
the Hebrew seers,^ manly and lyric spirits like his own,
who, nourished like him in religious emotions and con-
tinuous enthusiasm, like him displayed sacerdotal
pomp and majesty. To express such a sentiment,
images, and poetry addressed only to the eyes, were not
enough; sounds also were requisite, and that more
introspective poetry which, purged from corporeal shows,
could reach the souL Milton was a musician; his
hymns rolled with the slowness of a measured song and
the gravity of a declamation ; and he seems himself to
be describing his art in these incomparable verses, which
are evolved like the solemn harmony of an anthem :

((

But else, in deep of night, when drowsiness
Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial sirens' harmony,

* LyeidaSy I. 136-151. ' Faust^ Prolog im Hiynmd,

• See the prophecy against Archbishop Laud in Lycidas, 1. 180
" But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more. *'

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 283

That sit upon the nine infolded spheres,
And sing to those that hold the vital shears.
And turn the adamantine spindle round,
On which the fate of Oods and men is wound.
Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie,
To luU the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law.
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould, with gross unpurged ear.'' ^

With his style, his subjects dififered ; he compacted
and ennobled the poet's domain as well as his language,
and consecrated his thoughts as well as his words. He
who knows the true nature of poetry soon finds, as
Milton said a little later, what despicable creatures
" libidinous and ignorant poetasters " are, and to what
reUgious. glorious, splendid use poetry can be put in
things divine and human. " These abilities, whereso-
ever they be found are the inspired gift of God, rarely
bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every
nation ; and are of power, beside the ojB&ce of a pulpit,
to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of
virtue and public civility, to aUay the perturbations of
the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to
celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and
equipage of God's ahnightiness, and what he works, and
what he suffers to be wrought with ^high providence in
his church ; to sing the victorious agonies of martyrs
and saints, the deeds and triimiphs of just and pious
nations, doing valiantly through faith against the
enemies of Christ." ^

^ Arcades, I 61-78.
' Ths Beaaon of Church GhvemmerU, book ii. Mitford, L 147.

284 THE BENAISSANCE. book n.

In fact, from the first, at St. Paul's School and at
Cambridge, he had written paraphrases of the Psalms,
then composed odes on the Nativity, Ciraimcision, and
the Passion. Presently appeared sad poems on the Deaih
of a Fair Infant, An Epitaph on the Marchioness of
Winchester ; then grave and noble verses On Time, At
a solemn Musick, a sonnet On his heina arrived to the
Age of Twenty-three, " his late spring which no bud or
blossom sheVth." At last we have him in the country
with his father, and the hopes, dreams, first enchant-
ments of youth, rise from his heart like the morning
breath of a summer's day. But what a distance be-
tween these calm and bright contemplations and the
warm youth, the voluptuous Adonis of Shakespeare !
He walked, used his eyes, listened ; there his joys
ended ; they are but the poetic joys of the soul ;

" To hear the lark begin his flight,
• And singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; . . .
While the plowman, near at hand.
Whistles o'er the furrowed land.
And the milk-maid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his sithe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale." ^

To see the village dances and gaiety ; to look upon the
high triumphs " and the " busy himi of men " in the
tower'd cities;" above aU, to abandon himself to
melody, to the divine roU of sweet verse, and the
charming dreams which they spread before us in a

. 1 VAlU^ro, I. 41-68.

€€

CHAP. VL MILTON. 285

golden light ; — this is all ; and presently, as if he had
gone too far, to counterbalance this eulogy of visible
joys, he summons Melancholy :

" Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, stedfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with m^jestick train.
And sable stole of Cypress lawn
Over thy decent shoulders drawn.
Come, but keep thy wonted state.
With even step, and musing gait ;
And looks commercing with the skies.
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes." ^

With her he wanders amidst grave thoughts and grave
sights, which recall a man to his condition, and prepare
him for his duties, now amongst the lofty colonnades of
primeval trees, whose " high-embowed roof" retains the
silence and the twilight imder their shade ; now in

" The studious cloysters pale, . . .
With antick pillars massy proof.
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light ; " ^

now again in the retirement of the study, where the
cricket chirps, where the lamp of labour shines, where
the mind, alone with the noble- minds of the past, may

" Unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook." ^

1 n Penmo$o, I. 81-40. » Ibid, I. 166-160. » Ibid. I 88-92.

286 THE RENAISSANCR book n.

He was filled with this lofty philosophy. Whatever
the language he used, English, Italian, or Latin, what-
ever the kind of verse, sonnets, hymns, stanzas, tragedy
or epic, he always returned to it. He praised every-
where chaste love, piety, generosity, heroic force. It
was not from scruple, but it was innate in him ; his
chief need and faculty led him to noble conceptions. He
took a delight in admiring, as Shakspeare in creating,
as Swift in destro3dng, as Byron in combating, as
Spenser in dreaming. Even on ornamental poems,
which were only employed to exhibit costumes and
introduce fairy-tales, in Masques, like those of Ben
Jonson, he impressed his own character. They were
amusements for the castle; he made out of them
lectures on magnanimity and constancy : one of them,
Comus, well worked out, with a complete originality
and extraordinary elevation of style, is perhaps his
masterpiece, and is simply the eulogy of virtua

Here at the beginning we are in the heavens. A
spirit, descended in the midst of wild woods, repeats
this ode :

" Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live insphered
In regions mild of calm and serene air,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
Which men call earth ; and, with low-thoughted care
Confined, and pester'd in this pinfold here,
Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being,
Unmindfiil of the crown that Virtue gives.
After this mortal change, to her true servants.
Amongst the enthron'd €k)ds on sainted seats." ^

* Comus, I. 1-11.

A

CHAP. Vh MILTON. 387

Such cbamcteTs cannot speak : they sing. The drama
JB an antique opera, composed like the Prometkeus, of
solemn hymns. The spectator is transported beyond
the real world. He does not listen to men, but to
sentiments. He hears a. concert, as in Shakspeare ; the
Comus continues the Midstnniner NigMs Bream, as a
choir of deep men's yoices continues the glowing and
sad symphony of the instruments :

" Through the porplex'd paths of this drear wood.
The nodding horror of whose shady brows
Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger," '

strays a noble lady, separated ftom her two brothers,
troubled by the " sound of riot and ill-managed merri'
meut" which she hears from afar. The son of Giice
the enchantress, sensual Comus enters with a charming
rod in one hand, his glass in the other, amid the clamour
of men and women, with torches in their hands,
" headed like sundry sorts of wOd beasts ; " it is the
hour when

"The Botrnds and seas, with all their finny drove,
Now to the moon in wavering morrice move ;
And, on the tawny sands and shelves
Trip the pert faeries and the dapper elves."*

The lady is terrified, and sinks on her knees ; and in the
misty forms which float above in the pale light, perceives
the mysterious and heavenly guardians who watch over
her life and honour :

"O, welcome, pure-eyed Path ; white-handed Hope,

Thou hoveling angel, ^rt with golden wings ;

And thon, unblendsh'd fonn of Chastity,

< Ga«ai», I. 37-39. ' Ibid. I. llS-l]g.

288 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

I Bee ye visibly, and now believe

That He, the Supreme good, t* whom all things ill

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,

To keep my life and honour unassaiFd.

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night ?

I did not err ; there does a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

And casts a gleam over this tufted grove. "^

She calls her brothers in " a soft and solemn-breathing
sound," which " rose like a steam of rich distUl'd per-
fumes, and stole upon the air," ^ across the " violet-em-
broider*d vale," to the dissolute god whom she enchants.
He comes disguised as a " gentle shepherd," and says :

" Can any mortal mixture of earth's moidd
Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment ?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast.
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, tlirough the empty-vaulted night.
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness, till it smiled ! I have oft heard
My mother Circe with the syrens three,
Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades,
Culling their ix)tent herbs and baleful drugs ;
Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul.
And lap it in Elysium : Scylla wept,
And chid her barking waves into attention. . . .
But such a sacred and home-felt delight.
Such sober certainty of waking bliss,
I never heard till now."^

Cofnus, I. 213-225. • Ihid. I 655-657. » Ibid, I. 244-264.

/A

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 289

They were heavenly songs which Comns heard ;
Milton describes, and at the same time imitates them ;
he makes us understand the saying of his master Plato,
that virtuous melodies teach virtue.

Circe's son has by deceit carried off the noble lady,
and seats her, with " nerves all chained up," in a sump-
tuous palace before a table spread with all dainties.
She accuses him, resists, insults him, and the style
assumes an air of heroical indignation, to scorn the offer
of the tempter.

" When luBt,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd aud lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts ;
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,
Oft seen in chamel vaults and sepulchres
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave.
As loth to leave the body that it loved." ^

" A cold shuddering dew dips all o*er" Comus ; he pre-
sents a cup of wine ; at the same instant the brothers,
led by the attendant Spirit, rush upon him with swords
drawn. He flees, carrying off his magic wand. To
free the enchanted lady, they summon Sabrina, the
benevolent naiad, who sits

" Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of thy (her) amber-dropping hair."^

The " goddess of the silver lake " rises lightly from her

* Comus, L 463-473. It is the elder brother who utters these lines
when speaking of his sister. — Tr. ' Ibid, I, 861-863.

VOL. II. U

290 THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

"coral-paven bed," and her chariot "of turkis blue and
emerald-green," sets her down

" By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the willow, and the osier dank."^

Sprinkled by this cool and chaste hand, the lady leaves
the *' venom'd seat " which held her spell-bound ; the
brothers, with their sister, reign peacefully in their
father's palace ; and the Spirit, who has conducted all,
pronounces this ode, in which poetry leads up to philo-
sophy ; the voluptuous light of an Oriental legend beams
on the Elysium of the good, and all the splendours of
nature assemble to render virtue more seductive.

" To the ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that lie
Where day never shuts his eye
Up in the broad fields of the sky :
There I suck the liquid air
All amidst the gardens fair
Of Hespenis, and his daughters three
That sing about the golden tree :
Along the crisped shades and bowers
Revels the spruce and jocund spring ;
The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours,
Thither all their bounties bring ;
There eternal Summer dwells,
And west winds, with musky wing,
About the cedar'n alleys fling
Nard and cassia's balmy smelLs.
Iris there with humid bow
Waters the odorous banks, that blow
Flowers of more mingled hew
Than her purfled scarf can shew ;

1 Comus, I. 890.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 291

And drenches with Elysian dew
(List, mortals, if your ears be true)
Beds of hyacinth and roses,
Where young Adonis oft reposes,
Waxing well of his deep wound
In slumber soft ; and on the ground
Sadly sits the Assyrian queen :
But far above in spangled sheen
Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced
Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride.
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born.
Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn.
But now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly, or I can run
Quickly to the green earth's end.
Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend ;
And from thence can soar as soon
To the comers of the moon.
Mortals, that would follow me.
Love Virtue, she alone is free :
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime ;
Or, if Virtue feeble were.
Heaven itself would stoop to her."^

Ought I to have pointed out the awtw'^ardnesses,
strangenesses, exaggerated expressions, the inheritance
of the Eenaissance, a philosophical quarrel, the work of
a reasoner and a Platonist? I did not perceive these
faults. All was effaced before the spectacle of the bright

1 C<mus, I. 976-1023.

292 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Renaissance, transformed by austere philosophy, and of
sublimity worshipped upon an altar of flowers.

That, I think, was his last profane poem. Already,
in the one which followed, Lycidas, celebrating in the
style of Virgil the death of a beloved friend,^ he suffers
Puritan wmth and prepossessions to shine through,
inveighs against the bad teaching and tyranny of the
bishops, and speaks of " that two-handed engine at the
door, ready to smite (but) once, and smite no more."
On his return from Italy, controversy and action
carried him away; prose begins, poetry is arrested.
From time to time a patriotic or religious sonnet breaks
the long silence ; now to praise the chief Piiritans,
Cromwell, Vane, Fairfax ; now to celebrate the death of a
pious lady, or the life of a " virtuous young lady ; " once
to pray God "to avenge his slaughtered saints," the
unhaj)py l^testants of Piedmont, "whose bones lie
soiitter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;" again, on his
second wife, dead a year after their marriage, his well-
beloved " saint " — " brought to me, like Alcestis, fipom
the grave, . . . came, vested all in white, pure as her
mind ; " loyal friendships, sorrows bowed to or subdued,
asinnitions generous or stoical, which reverses did but
purify. Old age came; cut off from power, action, even
hope, he returned to the grand dreams of his youth. As
i>f old, he went out of this lower world in search of the
sublime ; for the actual is petty, and the familiar seems
dull. He selects his new characters on the verge of
sacred anticjuity, as he selected his old ones on the verge
of fabulous antiquity, because distance adds to their
stature ; and habit, ceasing to measure, ceases also to
depreciate them. Just now we had creatures of fancy:

^ Edward King died in 1637.

CHAP. VL MELTON. 293

Joy, daughter of Zephyr and Aurora ; Melancholy,
daughter of Vesta and Saturn; Comus, son of Circe,
ivy-crowned, god of echoing woods and turbulent excess.
Now we have Samson, the despiser of giants, the elect of
Israers Grod, the destroyer of idolaters, Satan and his
peers, Christ and his angels ; they come and rise before
our eyes like superhuman statues ; and their far removal,
rendering vain our curious hands, preserves our ad-
miration and their majesty. We rise further and
higher, to the origin of things, amongst eternal beings,
to the commencement of thought and life, to the battles
of God, in this unknown world where sentiments and
existences, raised above the ken of man, elude his
judgment and criticism to command his veneration
and awe ; the sustained song of solenm verse unfolds the
actions of these shadowy figures ; and then we experi-
ence the same emotion as in a cathedral, while the
music of the organ rolls along among the arches, and
amidst the brilliant light of the tapers clouds of
incense hide from our view the colossal columns.

But if the heart remains unchanged, the genius has
become transformed. Manliness has supplanted youth.
The richness has decreased, the severity has increased.
Seventeen years of fighting and misfortune have steeped
his soul in religious ideas. Mythology has yielded to
theology ; the habit of discussion has ended by subdu-
ing the lyric flight ; accumulated learning by choking
the original genius. The poet no more sings sublime
verse, he relates or harangues, in grave verse. He no
longer invents a personal style; he imitates antique
tragedy or epic. In Samson Agonistes he hits upon a
cold and lofty tragedy, in Paradise Begained on a cold

294 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

and noble epic ; he composes an imperfect and sublime
poem in Paradise Lost

Would to Heaven he could have written it as he tried,
in the shape of a drama, or better, as the Prontethenis of
-^chylus, as a lyric opera I A peculiar kind of subject
demands a peculiar kind of style ; if you resist, you de-
stroy your work, too happy if, in the deformed medley,
chance produces and preserves a few beautiful fragments.
To bring the supernatural upon the scene, you must
not continue in your every-day mood ; if you do, you
look as if you did not believe in it. Vision reveals it,
and the style of vision must express it. When Spenser
writes, he dreams. We listen to the happy concerts of
his aerial music, and the varying train of his fanciful
apparitions unfolds like a vapour before our accom-
modating and dazzled gaze. When Dante writes, he is
rapt ; and his cries of anguish, his transports, the in-
coherent succession of his infernal or mystical phantoms,
carry us with him into the invisible world which he
describes. Ecstasy alone renders visible and credible
the objects of ecstasy. If you teU us of the exploits
of the Deity as you teU us of Cromwell's, in a grave
and lofty tone, we do not see God ; and as He con-
stitutes the whole of your poem, we do not see any-
thing. We conclude that you have accepted a tradition,
that you adorn it with the fictions of your mind, that
you are a preacher, not a prophet, a decorator not a
poet. We find that you sing of God as the vulgar pray
to him, after a formula learnt, not from spontaneous
emotion. Change your style, or, rather if you can,
change your emotion. Try and discover in yourself
the ancient fervour of psalmists and apostles, to re-
create the divine legend, to experience the sublime

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 295

agitations by which the inspired and disturbed mind
perceives God ; then the grand lyric verse will roll on,
laden with splendours. Thus roused, we shall not have
to examine whether it be Adam or Messiah who speaks ;
we shall not have to demand that they shall be real,
and constructed by the hand of a psychologist; we
shall not trouble ourselves with their puerile or imlooked
for actions ; we shall be carried away, we shall share in
your creative madness ; we shall be drawn onward by
the flow of bold images, or raised by the combination
of gigantic metaphors; we shall be moved like -^chylus,
when his thunder-stricken Prometheus hears the uni-
versal concert of rivers, seas, forests, and created beings,
lament with him,^ as David before Jehovah, for whom
a thousand years are but as yesterday, who " carriest
them away as with a flood ; in the morning they are
like grass which groweth up." ^

But the age of metaphysical inspiration, long gone by,
had not yet reappeared. Far in the past Dante was
fading away ; far in the future Goethe lay unrevealed.
People saw not yet the pantheistic Faust, and that incom-
prehensible nature which absorbs all varying existence in
her deep bosom ; they saw no longer the mystic paradise
and immortal Love, whose ideal light envelopes souls re-
deemed. Protestantism had neither altered nor renewed
the divine nature ; the guardian of an accepted creed and
ancient tradition, it had only transformed ecclesiastical

^ u> Slot al0^p Koi raxuirrepoi. TPoal
TorafiQp T€ Tijyaif irovrliav re KVfMdrcap
din^pi0fiop y4\turfiCLy TOfifAijTdp re yij,
Kol rhp Tc^&wTriP kCkXop rjXlov KoKta,
tZeaOi /i\ ota irpb% Bcup iriax^ OeSs.
Prometheus VinctuSy ed. Hermann, p. 487, line 88. — Tr.
* Pa. xc. 6.

296 THE RENAISSANCE. book u.

discipline and the doctrine of graca It had only called
the Christian to personal salvation and freedom from,
priestly rula It had only remodelled man, it had not re-
created the Deity. It could not produce a divine epic, but
a human epic. It could not sing the battles and works
of God, but the temptations and salvation of the souL At
the time of Christ came the poems of cosmogony; at the
time of Milton, the confessions of psychology. At the
time of Christ each imagination produced a hierarchy
of supernatural beings, and a history of the world ; at
the time of Milton, every heart recorded the series of
its upKftings, and the history of graca Learning and
reflection led Milton to a metaphysical poem which was
not the natural offspring of the age, whilst inspiration
and ignorance revealed to Bunyan the psychological
narrative which suited the age, and the great man's
genius was feebler than the tinker^s simplicity.

And why ? Because Milton's poem, whilst it sup-
presses lyrical illusion, admits critical inquiry. Free
from enthusiasm we judge his characters ; we demand
that they shall be living, real, complete, harmonious, like
those of a novel or a drama. No longer hearing odes,
we would see objects and souls : we ask that Adam and
Eve should act in conformity with their primitive nature ;
that God, Satan, and Messiah should act and feel in
conformity with their superhuman natura Shakspeare
would scarcely have been equal to the task ; Milton, the
logician and reasoner, failed in it. He gives us correct
solemn discourse, and gives us nothing more; his
characters are speeches, and in their sentiments we find
only heaps of puerilities and contradictions.

Adam and Eve, the first pair ! I approach, and it
seems as though I discovered the Adam and Eve of

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 297

Bapbael Sanzio, imitated by Milton, so his biographers
tell us, gloiious, strong voluptuous children, naked in
the light of heaven, motionless and absorbed before
grand landscapes, with bright vacant eyes, with no
more thought than the bull or the horse on the grass
beside them. I listen, and I hear an English house-
hold, two reasoners of the period— Colonel Hutchinson
and his wife. Good Heavens ! dress them at once.
People with so much culture should have invented be-
fore all a pair of troosers and modesty. What dia-
Ic^es I Dissertations capped by politeness, mutual
sennonH concluded by bows. What bows ! Philo-
sophical compliments and moral smiles. I yielded, says
Eve,

" And from that time see
How beauty is excell'd by manly grace
And wisdom, which alone is truly iair." ^

Sear learned poet, you would have been better pleased
if one of your three wives, as an apt pupil, had uttered
to you by way of conclusion the above solid theo-
letical maxim. They did utter it to you; this ia a
acene from your own household :

" So spake our general mother ; and, with eyea
Of conjugal attraction unreproved
And meek eurrender, half-embracing lean'd
On our first father ; half her swelling breast
Naked met hia, under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid ; he, in delight
Both of her beanty and snbmissive charms,
Smiled with superiour love, . . . and press'd hei mjitron lip
With kisses pure." ^
' Faradiie Lett, book iv. L 1S9. < Ibid. I. 1S2-S02.

298 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

This Adam entered Paradise via England. In that
country he learned respectability^ and studied moral
speechifying. Let us hear this man before he has
tasted of the tree of knowledge. A bachelor of arts, in
his inaugural address, could not utter more fitly and
nobly a greater number of pithless sentences :

" Fair conBort, the hour
Of night, and all things now retired to rest,
Mind us of like repose ; since God hath set
Labour and rest, as day and night, to men
Successive ; and the timely dew of sleep,
Now falling with soft slumbrous weight, inclines
Our eyelids ; other creatures all day long
Rove idle, unemploy'd, and less need rest :
Man hath his daily work of body or mind
Appointed, which declares his dignity,
And the regard of Heaven on all his ways ;
While other animals unactive range.
And of their doings God takes no account. "* ^

A very useful and excellent Puritanical exhortation !
This is English virtue and morality; and at evening,
in every family, it can be read to the children Kke the
Bible. Adam is your true paterfamilias, with a vote,
an M.P., an old Oxford man, consulted at need by his
wife, dealing out to her with prudent measure the
scientific explanations which she requires. This night,
for instance, the poor lady had a bad dream, and Adam,
in his trencher-cap, administers this learned psycho-
logical draught : ^

» Paradise Lost, book iv. I. 610-622.

* It would be impossible that a man so learned, so argnmentative,
Mhould spend his whole time in gardening and making up nosegays.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 299

" Know, that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties that serve
Reason as chief ; among these Fancy next
Her office holds ; of all external things,
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion. . . .
Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes
To imitate her ; but, misjoining shapes.
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams ;
111 matching words and deeds long past or late.'' ^

Here was something to send Eve off to sleep again.

Her husband noting the effect, adds like an accredited

casuist:

" Yet be not sad :
Evil into the mind of God or man
May come and go, so unapproved ; and leave
No spot or blaine behind.^' ^

We recognise the Protestant husband, his wife's con-
fessor. Next day comes an angel on a visit Adam
tells Eve :

" Go with speed.

And, what thy stores contain, bring forth, and pour

Abundance, fit to honour and receive

Our heavenly stranger.*

She, like a good housewife, talks about the fnenu, and
rather proud of her kitchen-garden, says :

He
Beholding shall confess, that here on earth
God hath dispensed his bounties as in heaven.*' ^

1 Paradise Lost, book v. 1 100-113. ' Ibid. I 116-119.

» Ibid. I 313-316. * Ibid. I. 328-330.

800 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

Mark this becoming zeal of a hospitable lady. She
goes " with dispatchful looks, in haste " :

" What choice to choose for delicacy best ;
What order, so contrived as not to mix
Tastes, not well join'd, inel^ant ; but bring
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest,change.'' ^

She makes sweet wine, perry, creams ; scatters flowers
and leaves under the table. What an excellent house-
wife ! What a great many votes she will gain among
the country squires, when Adam stands for Parliament.
Adam belongs to the Opposition, is a Whig, a Puritan.

He '' walks forth ; without more train
Accompanied than with his own complete
Perfections : in himself was all his state,
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
On princes, when their rich retmue long
Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
Dazzles the crowd." ^

The epic is changed into a political poem, and we have
just heard an epigram against power. The preliminary
ceremonies are somewhat long ; fortunately, the dishes
being uncooked, "no fear lest dinner cooL" The
angel, though ethereal, eats like a Lincolnshire farmer :

" Nor seemingly
The angel, nor in mist, the conmion gloss
Of theologians ; but with keen dispatch
Of real hunger, and concoctive heat
To transubstantiate : what redounds, transpires
Through spirits with ease." ^

At table Eve listens to the angel's stories, then dis-

1 Paradise Lost, book v. I, 333-336.
• md. L 851-367. » Ibid. I, 434-439.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 301

creetly rises at dessert, when they are getting into
politics. English ladies may learn by her example
to perceive from their lord's faces when they are
''entering on studious thoughts abstruse." The sex
does not mount so high. A wise lady prefers her
husband's talk to that of strangers. ''Her husband
the relater she prefered." Now Adam hears a little
treatise on astronomy. He concludes, like a practical
Englishman:

" But to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom : what is more, is fume.
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence ;
And renders us, in things that most concern,
Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek.'' ^

The angel gone, Eve, dissatisfied with her garden, wishes
to have it improved, and proposes to her husband to
work in it, she on one side, he on the other. He says,
with an approving smile :

'' Nothing lovelier can be found
In woman, than to study household good.
And good works in her husband to promote." ^

But he fears for her, and would keep her at his side.
She rebels with a little prick of proud vanity, like
a young lady who mayn't go out by herself. She has
her way, goes alone and eats the apple. Here inter-
minable speeches come down on the reader, as numerous
and cold as winter showers* The speeches of Parliament
after Pride's Purge were hardly heavier. The serpent
seduces Eve by a collection of arguments worthy of

1 Paradise Lost, book viii I 192-197.
« Ibid, book ix. l. 232.

302 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

the punctilious Chillingworth, and then the syllogistic
mist enters her poor brain :

" His forbidding
Commends thee more, while it infers the good
By thee communicated, and our want :
For good unknown sure is not had ; or, had
And yet imknown, is as not had at alL . . .
Such prohibitions bind not." ^

Eve is from Oxford too, has also learned law in the
inns about the Temple, and wears, like her husband,
the doctor's trencher-cap.

The flow of dissertations never ceases ; from Para-
dise it gets into heaven : neither heaven nor earth, nor
hell itself, would swamp it.

Of aU characters which man could bring upon the
scene, God is the finest. The cosmogonies of peoples
are sublime poems, and the artists' genius does not
attain perfection until it is sustained by such con-
ceptions. The Hindoo sacred poems, the Biblical
prophecies, the Edda, the Olympus of Hesiod and
Homer, the visions of Dante, are glowing flowers from
which a whole civilisation blooms, and every emotion
vanishes before the terrible feeling through which they
have leapt from the bottom of our heart. Nothing
then can be more depressing than the degradation of
these noble ideas, settling into the regularity of formulas,
and under the discipline of a popular worship. What
is smaller than a god sunk to the level of a king and a
man ? what more repulsive than the Hebrew Jehovah,
defined by theological pedantry, governed in his actions
by the last manual of doctrine, petrified by literal
interpretation ?

^ Paradise Lost^ book \jl. I 753-760.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 303

Milton's Jehovah is a grave king, who maintains a
suitable state, something like Charles I. When we
meet him for the first time, in Book III., he is holding
council, and setting forth a matter of business. From
the style we see his grand furred cloak, his pointed
Vandyke beard, his velvet-covered throne and golden
dais. The business concerns a law which does not act
weU, and respecting which he desires to justify his rule.
Adam is about to eat the apple : why have exposed
Adam to the temptation ? The royal orator discusses
the question, and shows the reason ;

" I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the ethereal powers
And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd. . . .
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love ?
Where only, what they needs must do, appeared,
Not what they would : what praise could they receive 1
What pleasure I from such obedience paid ?
When will and reason (reason also is choice),
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd.
Made passive both, had served necessity,
Not me. They therefore, as to right belonged,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate ;
As if predestination over-ruled
Their will, disposed by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge : they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I : if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknowu.
So without least impulse or shadow of fate.
Or aught by me immutably foreseen.

304 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

They trespass, authors to themselves in all,
Both what they judge and what they choose." ^

The modem reader is not so patient as the Thrones,
Seraphim, and Dominations ; this is why I stop half-
way in the royal speech. We perceive that Milton's
Jehovah is connected with the theologian James I.,
versed in the arguments of Arminians and Gomarists,
very clever at the distinguo, and, before all, incompar-
ably tedious. He must pay his councillors of state very
well if he wishes them to listen to such tirades. His
son answers him respectfully in the same style. Goethe's
God, half abstraction, half legend, source of calm
oracles, a vision just beheld after a pyramid of ecstatic
strophes,^ greatly excels this MUtonic God, a business
man, a schoolmaster, an ostentatious man ! I honour
him too much in giving him these titles. He deserves
a worse name, when he sends Eaphael to warn Adam
that Satan intends him some mischief :

" This let him know,
Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend
Surprisal, unadmonish'd, unforewam'd." ^

This Mil tonic Deity is only a schoolmaster, who, fore-
seeing the fault of his pupU, tells liim beforehand the
grammar rule, so as to have the pleasure of scolding him
without discussion. Moreover, Kke a good politician,
he had a second motive, just as with liis angels, " For
state, as So\Tan King ; and to inuf e our prompt obedi-
ence." The word is out ; we see what Milton's heaven
is : a Wliitehall filled with bedizened footmen. The

* Paradise Lost^ book iii. I, 98-123.
' End of the continuation of Faust, Prologue in Heaven,
^ Paradise Lost, book v. I, 243.

CHAP. VI.

MILTON. 305

angels are the choristers, whose business is to sing
cantatas about the king and before the king, keeping
their places as long as they obey, alternating all
night long to sing " melodious hymns about the sovran
throne." What a life for this poor king ! and what a
cruel condition, to hear eternally his own praises ! ^
To amuse himself, Milton's Deity decides to crown his
son king — partner-king, if you prefer it. Eead the
passage, and say if it be not a ceremony of his time
that die poet describes :

** Ten thousand thousand ensigns high adranced,
Standards and gonfalons 'twixt ran and rear
Stream in the air, and for distinction serve
Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees ;
Or in their glittering tissues bear imblazed
Holy memorials, acts of zeal and lore
Recorded eminent ; " *

doubtless the capture of a Dutch vessel, the defeat of
the Spaniards in the Downs. The king brings forward
his son, " anoints " him, declares him " his great vice-
gerent : "

" To him shall bow

All knees in heaven. . . . Him who disobeys,

Me disobeys ; *' '

and such were, in fact, expelled from heaven the same

^ We are reminded of the history of Ira in Voltaire, condemned to
hear without intermission or end the praises of four chamberlains, and
the foUowing hymn :

** Que son m^rite est extreme !
Que de gr&ces, que de grandeur.
Ah ! combien monseigneur
Doit ^tre content de lui-m^me !
« Paradise Lost, book v. /. 688-694. » Ihid, I, 607-612.

VOL. n. X

306 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

day. " All seem'd well pleased ; all seem'd, but were
not all." Yet

" That day, as other Bolemn days, they spent
In song and dance about the sacred hill. . . .
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn
Desirous."^

Milton describes the tables, the dishes, the wine, the
vessels. It is a popular festival ; I miss the fireworks,
the bell-ringing, as in London, and I can fancy that all
would drink to the health of the new king. Then
Satan revolts ; he takes his troops to the other end of
the country, like Lambert or Monk, toward "the
quarters of the north," Scotland perhaps, passing througli
well-governed districts, " empires," with their sheriffs
and lord-lieutenants. Heaven is partitioned off like a
good map. Satan holds forth before his officers against
royalty, opposes in a word-combat the good royalist
Abdiel, who refutes his " blasphemous, false, and proud "
arguments, and quits him to rejoin his prince at Oxford.
Well armed, the rebel marches with his pikemen and
artillery to attack the fortress.^ The two parties slash
each other with the sword, mow each other down with
cannon, knock each other down with political argu-
ments. These sorry angels have their mind as well
disciplined as their limbs ; they have passed their

1 Paradise Loaf, book v. L 617-681.

' The Miltonic Deity is so much on the leyel of a king and man,
tliat he uses (with irony certainly) words like these :

** Lest unawares we lose
This our high place, oar Sanctuary, our HilL'*

His son, about to flesh his maiden sword, replies :

" If I be found the worst in heaven," etc.

Book V. 781-712.

k

CHAP. VL MILTON. 307

youth in a class of logic and in a drill school. Satan
holds forth like a preacher :

" What heaven's Lord had powerfdlest to send
Against us from about his throne, and judged
Sufficient to subdue us to his will,
But proves not so : then fallible, it seems,
Of future we may deem him, though till now
Omniscient thought."^

He also talks like a drill-sergeant. " Vanguard, to
right and left the front unfold." He makes quips as
clumsy as those of Harrison, the former butcher turned
officer. What a heaven ! It is enough to disgust
a man with Paradise; any one would rather enter
Charles I.'s troop of. lackeys, or Cromwell's Ironsides.
We have orders of the day, a hierarchy, exact sub-
mission, extra-duties, disputes, regulated ceremonials,
prostrations, etiquette, furbished arms, arsenals, depots
of chariots and ammunition. Was it worth while
leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works, build-
ings, artillery, a manual of tactics, the art of salutations,
and the Almanac de Gotha? Are these the things
which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath
entered into the heart to conceive?" What a gap
between this monarchical frippery * and the visions of
Dante, the souls floating like stars amid the harmonies,
the mingled splendours, the mystic roses radiating and
vanishii^ in the azure, the impalpable world in which

* Paradise Lost, book vL I 425-430.

* When Raphael comes on earth, the angels who are ''under watch,"
" in hononr rise." The disagreeable and characteristic feature of this
heaven is, that the universal motive is obedience, while in Dante's it is
love. *' Lowly reverent they bow. . . . Our happy state we hold, like
yonn, while our obedience holds."

308 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

all the laws of earthly life are dissolved, the unfEtthoin-
able abyss traversed by fleeting visions, like golden
bees gliding in the rays of the deep central sun ! Is
it not a sign of extinguished imagination, of the inroad
of prose, of the birth of practical genius, replaciag
metaphysics by morality ? What a fall ! To measure
it, read a true Christian poem, the Apocalypse. I copy
half-a-dozen verses ; think what it has become in the
hands of the imitator :

** And I turned to see the yoice that spake with me. And
being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks ;

<< And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto
the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot^ and
girt about the paps with a golden girdle.

** His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as
snow j and his eyes were as a flame of fire ;

'* And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a
furnace ; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

" And he had in his right hand seven stars : and out of his
mouth went a sharp two edged sword : and his countenance mu
as the sun shineth in his strength.

'' And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."^

When Milton was arranging his celestial show, he
did not fall as dead.

But if the innate and inveterate habits of logical
argument, joined with the literal theology of the time,
prevented him from attaining to lyrical illusion or from
creating living souls, the splendour of liis grand imagina-
tion, combined with the passions of Puritanism, furnished
him with an heroic character, several sublime hymns,
and scenery which no one has surpassed. The finest

1 Rev. i 12.

cttip. Ti. MTLTOlf. 308

thing in connection 'with this Paradise is hell ; and in
this histoiy of God, the chief part is taken by the devil
The ridiculooa devH of the middle-age, a homed eo-
chanter, a dirty jester, a petty and mischievous ape,
band-leader to a rabble of old women, has become a
giant and a hero. Like a conquered and banished
Cromwdl, he renmns admired and obeyed by those
■vhom he has drawn into the abyss. If he continues
master, it is because he deserves it; firmer, more
enterprising, more scheming than the rest, it is always
&om him that deep counsels, unlooked-for resources,
courageous deeds, proceed. It was he who invented
"deep-throated ei^ines . . . disgorging, . . . chained
thunderbolts, and hail of iron globes," and won the
second day's victory; he who in hell roused his de-
jected troops, and planned the ruin of man ; he who,
passing the guarded gates and the boundless chaos, amid
so many dtuigers, and across so many obstacles, made
man revolt gainst Qod, and gained for hell the whole
posterity of the new-bom. Though defeated, he pre-
vails, since he has won from the monarch on high the
third part of his angels, and almost all the sons of his
Adam. Though wounded, he triumphs, for the thunder
which smolie his head left his heart invincible. Though
feebler in force, be remains superior in nobility, since
he prefers suffering independence to happy servility,
and welcomes his defeat and his torments as a glory, a
liberty, and a joy. These are the proud and sombre
political passions of the constant though oppressed
Puritans ; Milton had felt them in the vicissitudes of
war, and the emigrants who had taken refuge amongst
the wild beasts and savages of America, found them
strong and energetic in the depths of their hearts.

310 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

" Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat
That we must change for heaven ? this mournful gloom
For that celestial light ? Be it so, since he.
Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid
What shall be right : farthest from him is best.
Whom reason has equaled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dweUs ! Hail, horrours ; hail.
Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest hell,
Receive thy new possessor ; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be ; all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least
We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy ; will not drive us hence :
Here we may reign secure ; and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell :
Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven."^

This sombre heroism, this harsh obstinacy, this biting
irony, these proud stiff arms which clasp grief as a
mistress, this concentration of invincible courage which,
cast on its own resources, finds everything in itself, this
power of passion and sway over passion, —

" The unconquerable will.
And study of revenge, immortal hate.
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome,"*

are features proper to the English character and to

1 Paradise Lost, book i. I. 242-263. • Bid. I 10^109.

English UteTattue, and you will find them later on in
Byron's Lara and Conrad.

Around the fallen angel, as within him, all ie great.
Dante's hell is but a hall of tortures, whose cells, one
below another, descend to the deepest wells. Milton's
hell is vast and vague.

" A dnngeon horrible on all Bidea round
As one great fhmace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather daikneea visible
Served only to ducover sights of woe,
Begions of soirow, doleful shades.' . . .
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual stonns
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathen heap, tmd ruin seems
Of ancient pile."*
The angels gather, innumerable legions :

" As when heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines.
With singed top their stately growth, though bare.
Stands on the blasted heath."^

Milton needs the grand and infinite ; he lavishes them.
His eyes are only content in limitless space, and he
produces colossal figures to fill it. Such is Satan
wallowing on the surges of the hvid sea :

" In bulk as huge . . . as . . . that sea-beast
Leviathan, which Qod of all hii works
Created hugeet that swim the ocean stream :
Him, haply, Blombering on the I^'orway foam,

312 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiS,
Deeming some island, oil, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea^ and wished mom delays/' ^

Spenser has discovered images just as fine, but he
has not the tragic gravity which the idea of heU
impresses. on a Protestant No poetic creation equals
in horror and grandeur the spectacle that greeted Satan
on leaving his dungeon :

^' At last appear
Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates ; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire.
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape ;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd
With mortal sting : about her middle round
A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal : yet, when they list, would creep.
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there ; yet there still bark'd and howl'd
Within unseen. . . . The other shape.
If shape it might be call'd, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb.
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd.
For each seem'd either : black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell.
And shook a dreadful dart ; what seem'd his head

^ Paradise Last, book i. I 196-208.

CHAP. VI; MILTON. 313

The likencM of & kiugj; crown had on.
Satan vb« now at hand, and from bis seat
The mtmater monng onward came m last,
With horrid atridee ; hell trembled m he strode.
The imdaunted fiend what thia might be admired,
Admired, not feor'd."*

The heroic glow of the old soldier of the Civil Wars
animates the infenial battle; and if Boyone were to
ask why Milton creates things greater than other men,
I shoold answer, becaose he has a greater heart

Hence the sublimity of his scenery. If I did not
fear the paradox, I shonld say that this scenery was a
school of virtue. Spenser is a smooth glass, which fills
us with calm images. Shakspeare is a burning mirror,
which overpowers ns, repeataily, with multiplied and
dazzling visions. The one distracts, the other disturbs
us. Milton raises our mind. The force of the objects
which he describes passes into us; we become great
by sjrmpathy with their greatness. Such is the effect
of his description of the Creatioa The calm and
creative command of the Messiah leaves its trace in
the heart which listens to it, and we feel more vigour
and moral health at the sight of this great work of
wisdom and will ;

*' On heaveni; ground they stood ; and from the ehore
They vieVd the vast immeasurable abyss
OntrageooB as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild.
Up from the bottom tom'd by Auioua winds
And auT^ng waves, as mountains, to assault
Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole.
' Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou de^ peace,'
Said then the omnific Word : 'your discoid end I' . . .
> Ainuf^K LoiC book a I. 643-678.

314 • THE RENAISSANCE. book ii.

Let there be light, said God ; and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure.
Sprung from the deep ; and from her native east
To journey through the aery gloom began.
Sphered in a radiant cloud. . . .
The earth was formed ; but in the womb as yet
Of waters, embryon immature involved,
Appeared not : over all the face of earth
Main ocean flow'd, not idle, but, with warm
Prolific humour softening all her globe.
Fermented the great mother to conceive.
Satiate with genial moisture, when Grod said,
* Be gathered now, ye waters under heaven.
Into one place, and let dry land appear.'
Inmiediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky :
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep.
Capacious bed of waters : thither they
Hasted with glad precipitance, uproll'd.
As drops on dust conglobing from the dry."^

This is primitive scenery; immense bare seas and
mountains, as Raphael Sanzio outlines them in the
background of his biblical paintings. Milton embraces
the general effects, and handles the whole as easily as
his Jehovah.

Let us quit superhuman and fanciful spectacles. A
simple simset equals them. Milton peoples it with
solemn allegories and regal figures, and the sublime is
bom in the poet, as just before it was bom from the
subject : —

1 Paradise Lost, book vii. /. 210-292.

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 315

" The sun, now fallen ...
Arraying with reflected purple and gold
The cloudB that on his western throne attend :
Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
Silence accompanied, for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests.
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung ;
Silence was pleased : now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires : Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded migesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light.
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.'' ^

The changes of the light become here a religious
procession of vague beings who fill the soul with
veneration. So sanctified, the poet prays. Standing
by the "inmost bower" of Adam and Eve, he says : —

" Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise of aU things common else !
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range by thee,
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure.
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known." ^

He justifies it by the example of saints and
patriarchs. He immolates before! it " the bought smile "
and "court-amours, mix'd dance, or wanton mask, or
midnight ball, or serenate." We are a thousand miles
from Shakspeare ; and in this Protestant eulogy of the

' Paradue Lost, book iv. /. 591-609. • lUd, U 750-757.

316 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

family tie, of lawful love, of "domestic sweets," of
orderly piety and of home, we perceive a new literature
and an altered time.

A strange great man, and a strange spectacle ! He
was bom with the instinct of noble things ; and this
instinct, strengthened in him by solitary meditation,
by accumulated knowledge, by stem logic, becomes
changed into a body of maxims and beliefs which no
temptation could dissolve, and no reverse shake. Thus
fortified, he passes life as a combatant, as a poet, with
courageous deeds and splendid dreams, heroic and rude,
chimerical and impassioned, generous and calm, like
every self-contained reasoner, like every enthusiast,
insensible to experience and enamoured of the beautifuL
Thrown by the chance of a revolution into politics and
theology, he demands for others the liberty which his
powerful reason requires, and strikes at the public
fetters which impede his personal energy. By the
force of his intellect, he is more capable than any one
of accumulating science ; by the force of his enthusiasm^
he is more capable than any of experiencing hatred.
Thus armed, he throws himself into controversy with
all the clumsiness and barbarism of the time ; but this
proud logic displays its argimients with a marvellous
breadth, and sustains its images with an unwonted
majesty: this lofty imagination, after having spread
over his prose an array of magnificent figures, carries
him into a torrent of passion even to the height of the
sublime or excited ode — a sort of axchangers song of
adoration or vengeance. The chance of a throne
preserved, then re-established, led him, before the
revolution took place, into pagan and moral poetiy,
after the revolution into Christian and moral verse.

J

CHAP. VI. MILTON. 317

In both he aims at the sublime, and inspires admiration ;
because the sublime is the work of enthusiastic reason,
and admiration is the enthusiasm of reason. In both,
he arrives at his point by the accumulation of
splendours, by the sustained fulness of poetic song, by
the greatness of his allegories, the loftiness of his
sentiments, the description of infinite objects and
heroic emotions. In the first, a lyrist and a philo-
sopher, with a wider poetic freedom, and the creator of
a stronger poetic illusion, he produces almost perfect
odes and choruses. In the second, an epic writer and
a Protestant, enslaved by a strict theology, robbed of
the style which makes the supernatural visible, deprived
of the dramatic sensibility which creates varied and
living souls, he accumulates cold dissertations, trans-
fthns man and God into orthodox and vulgar machines,
add only regains his genius in endowing Satan with
his republican soul, in multiplying grand landscapes and
colossal apparitions, in consecrating his poetry to the
praise of religion and duty.

Placed, as it happened, between two ages, he parti-
cipates in their two characters, as a stream which,
flowing between two different soils, is tinged by both
their hues. A poet and a Protestant, he receives from
the closing age the free poetic afSatus, and from the
opening age the severe political religion. He employed
the one in the service of the other, and displayed the
old inspiration in new subjects. In his works we
recognise two Englands : one impassioned for the
beautiful, devoted to the emotions of an imshackled
sensibility and the fancies of pure imagination, with
no law but the natural feelings, and no religion but
natural beUef; willingly pagan, often immoral; such

318 THE RENAISSANCE. book n.

as it is exhibited by Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Shakspeare, Spenser, and the superb harvest of poets
which covered the ground for a space of fifty years;
the other fortified by a practical religion, void of meta-
physical invention, altogether political worshipping
rule, attached to measured, sensible, useful, narrow
opinions, praising the virtues of the family, armed and
stiflfened by a rigid morality, driven into prose, raised
to the highest degree of power, wealth, and liberty.
In this sense, this style and these ideas are monuments
of history; they concentrate, recall, or anticipate the
past and the future ; and in the limits of a single work
are found the events and the feelings of several cen-
turies and of a whole nation.

BOOK m.
THE CLASSIC AGR

CHAPTER I.

Sl)t Jit&tatatim,

1. The Roisxhbers.

When we alternately look at the works of the court
painters of Charles I. and Charles II., and pass from
the noble portraits of Van Dyck to the figures of Lely,
the fall is sudden and great ; we have left a palace, and
we light on a bagnio.

Instead of the proud and dignified lords, at once
cavaliers and courtiers, instead of those high-bom yet
simple ladies who look at the same time princesses and
modest maidens, instead of that generous and heroic
company, el^ant and resplendent, in whom the spirit
of the Renaissance yet survived, but who already dis-
played the refinement of the modem ege, we are
con&onted by perilous and importunate courtesans,
with an expresBion either vile or harsh, incapable of
shame or of remorse.' Their pliunp smooth hEuida toy

1 Sea Mpecially the poitnita of Ledy Morkud, Lady Williuna
the conutcM of OU017, the Dnclieas of Clerelam], I«dy Price, ud
nKurothen.

-HI

. lit.

W.-. .

.i[i-ji :— : :
„ . .> nil ■ -.:--

I.
,■ ti\ Miiy 'if 'iiiili^ist; riiriiauism lia>l
I'lijii', mill fjiiijitics lijiil talked ilown
> u'liw llitt;;1iHiiiiy Kii;;]isli imiijrimittt'U,
,u>iis it-ni'i'-i, Iiaii ik'soliiteil tlie life i>f
.t- liadU-i-iiim-iIistiii'ljeil nt the t1iuii}:lit
,i.itk I'lfniily ; lialf-nxiJi-essetl iloubls
»itliiii like ii lieil of tlioms, iirnJ
.i)t}t .)t i<\'i'rv luiitidU, liiul cuded by

CHAP. I. THE EESTORATIO^. 331

taking a disgust at all ite pleasures, and abhorred all ite
natural instincts. Thus poisoned at ite very beginning,
the divine sentiment of justice became a mournful mad-
ness. Man, confessedly perverse and condenmed, believed
himself pent in a prison-house of perdition and vice,
into which no effort and no chance could dart a ray of
light, except a hand from above should come by free
grace, to rend the sealed stone of this tomb. Men lived
the life of the condemned, amid torments and anguish,
oppressed by a gloomy despair, haunted by spectres.
People would frequently im^ne themselves at the point
of death ; Cromwell himself, according to Dr. Simcott,
physician in Huntingdon, " had fancies about the Town
Cross;"' some would feel within them the motions of
an evil spirit ; one and all passed the night with their
eyes glued to the tales of blood and the impassioned
appeals of the Old Testament, listening to the threats
and thunders of a terrible God, and renewing in their
own hearts the ferocity of murderers and the exalta-
tion of seera. Under such a strain reason gradually
left them. They continually were, seekii^ after the
Lord, and found but a dream. After long hours of
exhaustion, tbey laboured under a warped and over-
wrought imagination. Dazzling forms, unwonted ideas,
sprang up on a sudden in their heated brain ; these men
were raised and penetrated by extraordinary emotions.
So transformed, they knew themselves no longer ; they
did not ascribe to themselves these violent and sudden
inspirations which were forced upon them, which com-
pelled them to leave the beaten tracks, which had no
connection one with another, which shook and enlight*
ened them when least expected, without being able

■ Oiira Cromwell'i Ltttot and SpanAa, ed. b; Carlyle, 1866, L 89.—
Tk.

» *^

ZEL -CIjlSSC aOH mid«l m.

^

^.rl>^ :o iiH«ik X :•: riTfci ibsci : ihrr skw in them

-zi M r: ^»:hl zzk -zzzL-ls^ilszl :d "ATr-ess Ai>d ihe stub-

T> -.ri'Tz. ill fiZiiiirfsi. hbl t^K^se an insdm-

ii»i liSi o-:-Tn *Ii ihe steps of
c iz.-i r^Cjcieii :Le eDcioaelmient
*>f Li^ •irea.zi ^.> & litiiiTr : lir 5« 4tc<:^ xstHfaodicallv to
•iriTr c-c: reas*:^ in-i enir.ije ecscasy. Geoige Fox
iKT»xe :i? Li5:orr. B;:r.Taz irive :: iis laws. Pariiament
presented an ejujnp'ir o: ::. all the puipiis lauded its
pni..:i»:e. ArdsdLns. s»>Iiiri^. v.:«iien discussed it, mas-
tered! it. excited one anc^Ler It the details of their
eii-erience and the publiviiy c-f their exaltations. A
new life was inacgurattd which had Uigfated and
eicludeil the old. All secidar tastes were suppressed,
all sensual j«>ys f«:*rbidden; the spiritual man alone
remained standing upi^^n the ruins of the past, and the
heart, debarred from all its natural safetT-valves> could
ouly direct its ^iews or aspirations towards a sinister
Deit}'. The tj-pical Puritan walked slowly along the
streets, his eyes raised towards heaven, with elongated
features, yeUow and haggard, with closely cropt hair, clad
in bro\ni or black, unadorned, clothed only to cover
liis nakedness. If a man had roimd cheeks, he passed
for lukewarm.^ The whole body, the exterior, the very
tone of voice, all must wear the sign of penitence and
divine grace. A Puritan spoke slowly, with a solemn
and somewhat nasal tone of voice, as if to destroy the
vivacity of conversation and the melody of the natural
voice. His speech stuffed ^vith scriptural quotations,
his style borrowed from the prophets, his name and the

^ Colonel Hutchinson was at one time held in suspicion becauae he
wore long hair and dressed weU.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 323

names of his children drawn from the Bible, bore
witness that his thoughts were confined to the terrible
world of the seers and ministers of divine vengeance.
From within, the contagion spread outwards. The
fears of conscience were converted into laws of the
state. Personal asceticism grew into public tyranny.
The Puritan proscribed pleasure as an enemy, for others
as well as for himself. Parliament closed the gambling-
houses and theatres, and had the actors whipped at the
cart's tail ; oaths were fined ; the May-trees were cut
down ; the bears, whose fights amused the people, were
put to death ; the plaster of Puritan masons reduced
nude statues to decency ; the beautiful poetic festivals
were forbidden. Fines and corporal punishments shut
out, even from children, games, dancing, bell-ringing,
rejoicings, junketings, wrestling, the chase, all exercises
and amusements which might profane the Sabbath.
The ornaments, pictures, and statues in the churches
were pulled down or mutilated. The only pleasure
which they retained and permitted was the singing of
psalms through the nose, the edification of long sermons,
the excitement of acrimonious controversies, the harsh
and sombre joy of a victory gained over the enemy of
mankind, and of the tyranny exercised against the
demon's supposed abettors. In Scotland, a colder and
sterner land, intolerance reached the utmost limits of
ferocity and pettiness, instituting a surveillance over the
private life and home devotions of every member of a
family, depriving Catholics of their children, imposing
the abjuration of Popery under pain of perpetual im-
prisonment or death, dragging crowds of witches^ to the

^ 1648 ; thirty in one day. One of them confessed that she had
been at a gathering of more than five hundred witches.

324 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in,

stake.^ It seemed as though a black cloud had
weighed down the life of man, drowning all light,
wiping out all beauty, extinguishing all joy, pierced
here and there by the glitter of the sword and by the
flickering of torches, beneath which one might perceive
the indistinct forms of gloomy despots, of bilious
sectarians, of silent victims.

11.

After the Restoration a deliverance ensued. like
a checked and choked up stream, public opinion dashed
with all its natural force and all its acquired momentum,
into the bed from which it had been debarred. The

^ In 1652, the kirk-session of Glasgow "brot^boyes and servants
before them, for breaking the sabbath, and other faults. They had
clandestine censors, and gave money to some for this end. " — Note 28,
taken from Wodrow*8 Analeda; Buckle, History of Civilization tn
England, 8 vols. 1867, iiL 208.

Even early in the eighteenth century, " the most popular divines '*
in Scotland affirmed that Satan ** frequently appears clothed in a cor-
poreal substance." — IMd, iii 288, note 76, taken from Memoirs ofCL.
Lewes.

** No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her chOd
on the Sabbath day. »*— Note 186. Ibid, iii. 268 ; from Rev. C. J. Lyon's
SL Andreies, vol. i. 468, with regard to government of a colony. [It
would have been satisfactory if Mr. Lyon had given his authority.] — Tk,

** (Sept 22, 1649) The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act,
that ther sould be no pypers at brydels," etc. — IhuL iii. 268, note 168.
In 1719, the Presbytery of Edinburgh indignantly declares: "Yea,
some have arrived at that height of impiety, as not to be ashamed of
washing in waters, and swimming in rivers upon the holy Sabbath.** —
Note 187. Ifnd. iii. 266.

'* I think^David had never so sweet a time as then, when he wis
pursued as a partridge by his son Absalom." — Note 190. Gray's Orsat
and Precious Promises.

See the whole of Chapter iii. vol. iii., in which Buckle has described,
by similar quotations, the condition of Scotland, chiefly in the seven-
teenth century.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 325

outburst carried away the dams. The violent return
to the senses drowned morality. Virtue had the
semblance of Puritanism. Duty and fanaticism became
mingled in common disrepute. In this great reaction^
devotion and honesty, swept away together, left to man-
kind but the wreck and the mire. The more excellent
parts of human nature disappeared ; there remained but
the animal, without bridle or guide, urged by his desires
beyond justice and shame.

When we see these manners through the medium of
a Hamilton or a Samt-Evremond, we can tolerate them.
Their French varnish deceives us. Debauchery in a
Frenchman is only half disgusting; with him, if the
animal breaks loose, it is without abandoning itself to
excess. The foundation is not, as with the Englishman,
coarse and powerful You may break the glittering ice
which covers him, without bringing down upon yourself
the swollen and muddy torrent that roars beneath his
neighbour ; ^ the stream which will issue from it will
only have its petty dribblings, and will return quickly
and of itself to its accustomed channeL The French-
man is mild, naturally refined, little inclined for great
or gross sensuality, liking a sober style of talk, easily
armed against filthy manners by his delicacy and good
taste. The Count de Grammont has too much wit to
love an orgie. After all an orgie is not pleasant ; the
breaking of glasses, brawling, lewd talk, excess in eating
and drinking, — there is nothing in this very tempting
to a rather delicate taste : the Frenchman, after Gram-
mont's type, is bom an epicurean, not a glutton or
a drunkard. What he seeks is amusement, not unre-

^ See, in Richardson, Swift, and Fielding, but particularly in
Hogarth, the delineation of brutish debauchery.

326 THE CLASSIC AGE. book hi.

strained joy or bestial pleasure. I know full well that
he is not without reproach. I would not trust him with
my purse, he forgets too readily the distinction between
mefiim and tuum ; above all, I woidd not trust him with
my wife : he is not over-delicate ; his escapades at the
gambling-table and with women smack too much of the
sharper and the briber. But I am wrong to use these big
words in connection with him ; they are too weighty,
they crush so delicate and so pretty a specimen of
humanity. These heavy habits of honour or shame can
only be worn by serious-minded men, and Grammont
takes nothing seriously, neither his fellowmen, nor
himself, nor vice, nor virtue. To pass his time agreeably
is his sole endeavour. "They had said good-bye to dulness
in the army," observed Hamilton, " as soon as he was
there." That is his pride and his aim; he troubles
himself, and cares for nothing beside. His valet robs
him ; another would have brought the rogue to the
gallows ; but the theft was clever, and he keeps his
rascal He left England forgetting to marry the girl he
was betrothed to ; he is caught at Dover ; he returns
and marries her : this was an amusing contre-temps ; he
asks for nothing better. One day, being penniless, he
fleeces the Count de Cam(5ran at play. " Coidd Gram-
mont, after the figure he had once cut, pack off like
any common fellow ? By no means ; he is a man of
feeling ; he will maintain the honour of France." He
covers his cheating at play with a joke ; in reality, his
notions of property are not over-clear. He regales
Cam^ran with Camdran's o^vn money ; would Cam^ran
have acted better or otherwise? What matter if his
money be in Grammont's purse or his own ? The main
point is gained, since there is pleasure in getting the

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 327

money, and there is pleasure in spending it. The
hateful and the ignoble vanish from such a life. If
he pays his court to princes, you may be sure it is not
on his knees; so lively a soul is not weighed down
by respect; his wit places him on a level with the
greatest; under pretext of amusing the king,^he tells
him plain truths.^ If he finds himself in London,
surrounded by open debauchery, he does not plunge into
it; he passes through on tiptoe, and so daintily that
the mire does not stick to him. We do not recognise
any longer in his anecdotes the anguish and the brutality
which were really felt at that time; the narrative
flows on quickly, raising a smUe, then another, and
another yet, so that the whole mind is brought by an
adroit and easy progress to something like good humour.
At table, Grammont will never stuff himself; at play,
he will never grow violent ; with his mistress, he will
never give vent to coarse talk ; in a duel, he will not
hate his adversary. The wit of a Frenchman is like
French wine ; it makes men neither brutal, nor wicked,
nor gloomy. Such is the spring of these pleasrures : a
supper will destroy neither delicacy, nor good nature,
nor enjoyment. The Ubertine remains sociable, polite,
obliging ; his gaiety cuhninates only in the gaiety of
others;* he is attentive to them as naturally as to
himself; and in addition, he is ever on the alert and
intelligent : repartees, flashes of brilliancy, witticisms,

^ The king was playing at backgammon ; a doubtful throw occurs :
** Ah, here is Grammont, wholl decide for us ; Grammont, come and
decide." **Sire, you have lost" ** What : you do not yet know." . . .
*• Ah, Sire, if the throw had been merely doubtful, these gentlemen
would not have failed to say you had won."

' Hamilton says of Grammont, " He sought out the unfortunate
only to succour them. "

328 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

sparkle on his lips ; he can think at table and in com-
pany, sometimes better than if alone or fasting. It is
clear that with him debauchery does not extinguish
the man ; Grammont woidd say that it perfects him ;
that wit, the heart, the senses, only arrive at excel-
lence and true enjoyment, amid the elegance and anima-
tion of a choice supper.

III.

It is quite the contrary in England. When we
scratch the covering of an Englishman's morality, the
brute appears in its violence and its deformity. One
of the English statesmen said that with the French an
unchained mob coidd be led by words of humanity and
honour,^ but that in England it was necessary, in order
to appease them, to throw to them raw flesh. Insults,
blood, orgie, that is the food on which the mob of noble-
men, under Charles II., precipitated itself. AU that
excuses a cfimival was absent ; and, in particidar, wit
Three years after the return of the king, Butler published
his Hvdibras ; and with what ^clat his contemporaries
only coidd tell, while the echo of applause is kept up
even to our own days. How low is the wit, with what
awkwardness and dulness he dilutes his revengeful satire.
Here and there lurks a happy picture, the remnant of a
poetry which has just perished; but the whole work
reminds one of a Scarron, as unworthy as the other, and
more malignant. It is written, people say, on the model
of Don Quixote; Hudibras is a Puritan knight, who
goes about, like his antitype, redressing wrongs, and
pocketing beatings. It would be truer to say that it

^ This saying sounds strange after the horrors of the Commune. — ^Te.

CHAP. I, THE BESTORATION. 329

resembles the wretched imitation of Avellaneda.' The
short metre, well snited to buffoonery, hobbles along
■without rest and limpingly, flounderii^ in the mud
which it delights in, as foul and as dull as that of the
Sniide Traveatie? The description of Hudibras and
his horse occupies the beat part of a canto ; forty lines
are taken up by describing his heard, forty more by
describing his breeches. Endless scholastic discussions,
arguments as long as those of the Puritans, spread
their wastes and briais over half the poem. No action,
no simplicity, all is would-be satire and gross cari-
cature ; there is neither art, nor harmony, nor good taste
to be found in it ; the Puritan style is converted into an
absurd gibberish ; and the engalled rancour, missing its
aim by its mere excess, spoils the portrait it wishes to
draw. Would you believe that such a writer gives
himself airs, wishes to enliven us, pretends to be funny ?
What delicate raillery is there in this pictiu« of Hndi-
braa* beard !

" HU tawny beard was th' equal grace

Both of his wisdom and his fiu» ;

In cut and die so. like a tile,

A sudden view it would beguile :

The upper part whereof was whey,

Tbe netber orange, mix'd with grey.

This hairy meteor did denounce

The fall of sceptres and of crowns :

> A Spanish aathor, irho contiiiaed and imitBted Cervantes' Don
QaiaioU.

' A work by Hcairon. Hvdibna, ed. Z. Qrey, 1801, 2 Tola., i.
canto 1. 1. 2SS, sayi olio :

"For as £aeas bore Ids sire
Upon his ahoiilderi through the fire.
Our knight did be«r no leas a pack
Of his own bnttocks on his back. "

330 THE CLASSIC AGE. book ni.

With grisly type did represent

Declining age of government,

And tell with hieroglyphic spade

Its own grave and the state's were made." ^

Butler is so well satisfied with his insipid fun, that he
prolongs it for a good many lines :

" Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew
In time to make a nation rue ;
Tho' it contributed its own fall,
To wait upon the public downfall. . . .
'Twas bound to suffer persecution
And martyrdom with resolution ;
T' oppose itself against the hate
And vengeance of the incens'd state,
In whose defiance it was worn.
Still ready to be pull'd and torn.
With red-hot irons to be tortur*d,
Revil'd, and spit upon, and martyr'd.
Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast
As long as monarchy should last ;
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,
And fall, as it was consecrate,
A sacrifice to fall of state.
Whose thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with its whiskers.
And twine so close, that time should never.
In life or death, their fortimes sever ;
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow." ^

The nonsense increases as we go on. Could any one
have taken pleasure in humour such as this ? —

1 Hudibras, part i canto L I, 241-250. > Ibid. I 253-280.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 331

'* This Bword a dagger had, his page,
That was but little for his age ;
And therefore waited on him so
As dwarfs upon knights-errant do. . . .
When it had stabb'd, or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers, or chip bread. . . .
'Twould make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth." ^

Everything becomes trivial; if any beauty presents
itself, it is spoUed by burlesque. To read those long
details of the kitchen, those servile and crude jokes,
people might fancy themselves in the company of a
common buffoon in the market-place ; it is the talk of
the quacks on the bridges, adapting their imagination
and language to the manners of the beer-shop and the
hovel. There is filth to be met with there; indeed,
the rabble wiU laugh when the mountebank alludes to
the disgusting acts of private life.^ Such is the
grotesque stuff in which the courtiers of the Restoration
delighted; their spite and their coarseness took a

^ HudibraSf part i. canto L L 875-386.

^ *' Quoth Hudibras, 1 smell a rat.
Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate ;
For though the thesis which thou lay'st
Be true ad amusaim as thou say*st
(For that bear-baiting should appear
Jure divino lawfuller
Than Synods arc, thou do'st deny,
Tolidem verbis ; so do I),
Yet there is fallacy in this ;
For if by sly homososis,
TussU pro crepilUf an art

• • •

Thou wouldst sophistically imply,
Both are unlawful, I deny."

Part i. canto i. I 821-834.

332 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in,

pleasure in the spectacle of these bawling puppets;
even now, after two centuries, we hear the ribald
laughter of this audience of lackeys.

IV.

Charles II., when at his meals, ostentatiously drew
Grammont's attention to the fact that his officers served
him on their knees. They were in the right ; it was
their fit attitude. Lord Chancellor Clarendon, one of
the most honoured and honest men of the Court, learns
suddenly and in full council that his daughter Anne is
enceinte by the Duke of York, and that the Duke, the
king's brother, has promised her marriage. Listen to
the words of this tender father ; he has himself taken
care to hand them down :

" The Chancellor broke out uito a very iimnoderate passion
against the wickedness of his daughter, and said with all
imaginable earnestness, 'that as soon as he came home, he
would turn her (his daughter) out of his house as a strumpet
to shift for herself, and would never see her again.' " ^

Observe that this great man had received the news
from the king imprepared, and that he made use of
these fatherly expressions on the spur of the moment
He added, "that he had much rather his daughter
shoidd be the duke's whore than his wife." Is this not
heroical ? But let Clarendon speak for himself. Only
such a true monarchical heart can surpass itself:

" He was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he
hoped their lordships would concur with him ; that the king
should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower,

^ Ths Life of Clarendon, ed. by himself, new ed., 1827, 3 vols., L
878.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 333

and to be cast into a dungeon under so strict a guard, that no
person living should be admitted to come to her; and then
that an act of Parliament should be immediately passed for the
cutting off her head, to which he would not only give his
consent, but would very willingly be the first man that should
propose it." ^

What Roman virtue ! Afraid of not being believed he
insists; whoever knew the man, will believe that all
this came from the very bottom of his heart. He is
not yet satisfied ; he repeats his advice ; he addresses
to the king different conclusive reasonings, in order
that they might cut off the head of his daughter :

'' I had rather submit and bear it (this disgrace) with all
humihty, than that it should be repaired by makmg her his
wife, the thought whereof I do so much abominate, that I had
much rather see her dead, with all the infamy that is due to
her presumption." 2

In this manner, a man, who is in difficulty, can keep
his salary and his Chancellor's robes. Sir Charles
Berkley, captain of the Duke of York's guards, did
better still; he solemnly swore "that he had lain
with the yoimg lady," and declared himself ready to
marry her " for the sake of the duke, though he knew
well the familiarity the duke had with her." Then,
shortly afterwards, he confessed that he had lied, but
with a good intention, in all honour, in order to save
the royal family from such a mesalliance. This admir-
able self-sacrifice was rewarded; he soon had a
pension from the privy purse, and was created Earl of
Falmouth. From the first, the baseness of the public
corporations rivalled that of individuals. The House

* The Life of ClarendoTi, L 879. • Ibid, I 880.

334 THE CLASSIC AGE. book hi.

of Commons, but recently master of the country, still
full of Presbyterians, rebels, and conquerors, voted
"that neither themselves nor the people of England
could be freed from the horrid guilt of the late un-
natural rebellion, or from the pimishment wliich that
guilt merited, imless they formally availed tliemselves
of his majesty's grace and pardon, as set forth in the
declaration of Breda." Then all these heroes went in
a body and threw themselves with contrition at the
sacred feet of their monarch. In this universal pros-
tration it seemed that no one had any courage left.
The king became the hireling of Louis XIV., and
sold his coimtry for a large pension. Ministers,
members of Parliament, ambassadors, all received
French money. The contagion spread even to patriots,
to men noted for their purity, to marytrs. Lord
WiUiam Eussell intrigued with Versailles ; Algernon
Sidney accepted 500 guineas. They had not dis-
crimination enough to retain a show of spirit; they
had not spirit enough to retain a show of honour.^

In men thus laid bare, the first thing that strikes you
is the bloodthirsty instinct of brute beasts. Sir John

* ** Mr. Evdyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the
Court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the
King's coming in." — Pejnjs' Diary , ed. Lord Braybrooke, 3d ed., 1848,
5 vols., iv. April 26, 1667.

** Mr. Povy says that to this day the King do follow the women as
much as he ever did ; that the Duke of York .... hath come out of
his wife's bed, and gone to others laid in bed for him ; . . . . that the
family (of the Duke) is in horrible disorder by being in debt by
spending above £60,000 per annum, when he hath not £40,000" (Ihid.
iv. June 23, 1667).

** It is certain that, as it now is, the seamen of England, in my con-
science, would, if they could, go over and serve the king of France or
Holland rather than us" {Ibid, iv. June 25, 1667).

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 335

Coventry, a member of Parliament, let some word
escape him, which was construed into a reproach of the
royal amours. His friend, the Duke of Monmouth,
contrived that he should be treacherously assaidted
imder the king's command, by respectable men devoted
to his service, who slit his nose to the bone. A vile
wretch of the name of Blood tried to assassinate the
Duke of Ormond, and to stab the keeper of the
Tower, in order to steal the crown jewels. Charles
II., considering that this was an interesting and dis-
tinguished man of his kind, pardoned him, gave him an
estate in Ireland, and admitted him to his presence,
side by side with the Duke of Ormond, so that Blood
became a sort of hero, and was received in good society.
After such splendid examples, men dared everything.
The Duke of Buckingham, a lover of the Coimtess of
Shrewsbury, slew the Earl in a duel; the Countess,
disguised as a page, held Buckingham's horse, while she
embraced him, covered as he was with her husband's
blood; and the murderer and adulteress returned
publicly, and as triumphantly, to the house of the
dead man. We can no longer wonder at hearing Count
Konigsmark describe as a " peccadillo " an assassination
which he had committed by waylaying his victim. I
transcribe a duel out of Pepys, to give a notion of the
manners of these bloodthirsty cut-throats. Sir H.
Bellassis and Tom Porter, the greatest friends in
the world, were talking together :

" and Sir H. Bellassis talked a little louder than ordinary to
Tom Porter, giving of him some advice. Some of the company
standing by said, ' What ! are they quarrelling, that they talk
80 high ] ' Sir H. Bellassis, hearing it, said, ' No ! ' says he :
' I would have you know I never quarrel, but I strike : and

336 THE CliASSIO AGE. book iu.

taike that as a rule of mine ! ' ' How ! ' Bays Tom Porter,
' strike ! I would I could see the man in England that dutst
give me a blow ! ' with that Sir H. Bellassis did gire him 8 box
of the eare ; and so they were going to fight there, but were
hindered. . . . Tom Porter, being informed that Sir H. Bellas-
sis' coach was coming, went down out of the coffee-house where
he staid for the tidings, and stopped the coach, and bade Sir
H. Bellanis come out. ' Why,' says H. Bellassis, 'you will not
hurt me coming out, will you 1 ' ' No,' says Tom Porter. So
out he went, and both drew. . . . They wounded one another,
and Sir H. BellasBiB bo much that it ie feared he will die " — ^

■which he did ten days after.

BuU-dogs like these took no pity on their enemies.
The Eestoration opened with a butchery. The Lords
conducted the tricjs of the republicans with a shame-
lesaness of cruelty and an excess of rancour that were
extraordinary. A sheriff struggled with Sir Hany
Vane on the scaffold, nmimaging his pocketa, and
taking from him a paper which he attempted to read.
During the trial of Major-General Harrison, the hang-
man was placed by his side, io a black dress, with a
rope in his hand ; tliey sought to give him a full
enjoyment of the foretaste of death. He was cut down
alive from tlie gibbet, and disembowelled ; he saw hia
entrails cast into the fire ; he was then quartered, and his
still beating heart was torn out and shown to the peopl&
The cavaliers gathered round for amusement Here and
there one of them would do worse even than this. Colonel
Turner, seeing them quarter John Coke, the lawyer,
told the sheriff's men to bring Hugh Fetera, another of
the condemned, nearer; the executioner came up, and
rubbing his bloody hands, asked the unfortunate man
* Ptpy^ Diary, voL ir., 29th Jnly 1887.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 337

if the work pleased him. The rotting bodies of Crom-
well, IretoD and Bradsliaw were dug up in the night,
and -their heads fixed on poles over Westminster Hall.
Ladies went to see these disgusting sights ; the good
Evelyn applauded them ; the courtiers made songs on
them. These people were fallen so low, that they did
not even turn sick at it. Sight and smell no longer
aided humanity by producing repugnance ; their senses
were as dead as their hearts.

From carnage they threw themselves into debauchery.
You should read the life of the Earl of Eochester, a
courtier and a poet, who was the hero of the time.
His manners were those of a lawless and wretched
mountebank; his delight was to haunt the stews, to'
debauch women, to write filthy songs and lewd pam-
phlets ; he spent hia time between gossiping with the
maids of honour, broils with men of letters, the re-
ceiving of insults, the giving of blows. By way of
playing the gallant, he eloped with his wife before he
married her. Out of a spirit of bravado, he declined
fighting a duel, and gained the name of a coward. Eor
five years together he was said to be drunk. The spirit
within hJTn failing of a worthy outlet, plunged him into
adventures more befittii^ a clown. Once with the
Duke of Buckingham he rented an inn on the I^ew-
market road, and turned innkeeper, supplying the
husbands with drink and defiling their wives. He
introduced himself, disguised as an old woman, into the
hooae of a miser, robbed him of his wife, and passed
her on to Buckingham. The husband hanged himself ;
they made very merry over the affair. At another time
he disguised himself as a chairman, then as a beggar, and
paid court to the gutter-girls. He ended by turning a

VOL. u. z

338 THE CLASSIC AGK book m.

quack astrologer, and vendor of drugs for procuring abor-
tion, in the suburbs. It was the licentiousness of a fervid
imagination, which fouled itself as another would have
adorned it, which forced its way into lewdness and folly
as another would have done into sense and beauty. What
can come of love in hands like these ? We cannot copy
even the titles of his poems ; they were written only
for the haunts of vice. Stendhal said that love is like
a dried up bough cast into a mine ; the crystals cover
it, spread out into filagree work, and end by converting
the worthless stick into a sparkling tuft of the purest
diamonds. Eochester begins by depriving love of all
its adornment, and to make sure of grasping it, con-
verts it into a stick. Every refined sentiment, every
fancy; the enchantment, the serene, sublime glow
which transforms in a moment this wretched world of
ours ; the illusion which, \miting all the powers of our
being, shows us perfection in a finite creature, and
eternal bliss in a transient emotion, — all has vanished ;
there remain but satiated appetites and palled 8ense&
The worst of it is, that he writes without spirit, and
methodicaUy enough. He has no natural ardour, no
picturesque sensuality ; his satires prove him a disciple
of Boileau. Nothing is more disgusting than obscenity
in cold blood. We can endure the obscene works of
Giulio Eomano, and his Venetian voluptuousness, be-
cause in them genius sets oflf sensuality, and the loveli-
ness of the splendid coloured draperies transforms an
orgie into a work of art. We pardon Babelais, when
we have entered into the deep current of manly joy
and vigour, with which his feasts abound. We can
hold our nose and have done with it, while we follow
with admiration, and even sympathy, the torrent of

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 339

ideas and fancies which flows through his mire. But
to see a man trying to be elegant and remaining
obscene, endeavouring to paint the sentiments of a
navvy in the language of a man of the world, who
tries to find a suitable metaphor for every kind of
filth, who plays the blackguard studiously and de-
liberately, who, excused neither by genuine feeling, nor
the glow of fancy, nor knowledge, nor genius, degrades
a good style of writing to such work, — ^it is like a
rascal who sets himself to sully a set of gems in a
gutter. ' The end of all is but disgust and illness.
While La Fontaine continues to the last day capable
of tenderness and happiness, this man at the age of
thirty insults the weaker sex with spiteful malignity :

" When she is young, she whores herself for sport ;
And when she's old, she bawds for her support. . . .
She is a snare, a shamble, and a stews ;
Her meat and sauce she does for lechery chuse,
And does in laziness delight the more,
Because by that she is provoked to whore.
Ungrateful, treacherous, enviously inclined,
Wild beasts are tamed, floods easier far confined,
Than is her stubborn and rebellious nund. . . .
Her temper so extravagant we find,
She hates, or is impertinently kind.
Would she be grave, she then looks like a devil.
And like a fool or whore, when she be civil . . .
Contentious, wicked, and not fit to trust.
And covetous to spend it on her lust." ^

What a confession is such a judgment I what an ab-
stract of life ! You see the roisterer stupified at the
end of his career, dried up like a mummy, eaten away

^ Rochester'B works, edited by St Evremond.

340 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m,

by ulcers. Amid the choruses, the crude satires, the
remembrance of plans miscarried, the sullied enjoyments
which are heaped up in his wearied brain as in a sink,
the fear of damnation is fermenting ; he dies a devotee
at the age of thirty-three.

At the head of all, the king sets the example. This
" old goat," as the courtiera call him, imagines himself
a man of gaiety and elegance. What gaiety ! what
elegance ! French mannera do not suit men beyond
the Channel When they are Catholics, they fall into
narrow superatition ; when epicureans, into gross de-
bauchery; when courtiers, into base servility; when
sceptics, into vulgar atheism. The court of England
could only imitate French furniture and dress. The
regular and decent exterior which public taste main-
tained at Versailles was here dispensed with as trouble-
some. Charles and his brother, in their state dress,
woidd set oflf running as in a carnival. On the day
when the Dutch fleet burned the English ships in the
Thames, the king supped with the Duchess of Mon-
mouth, and amused himself by chasing a moth. In
coimcil, while business was being transacted, he would
be playing with his dog. Eochester and Buckingham
insulted him by insolent repartees or dissolute epi-
grams ; he would fly into a passion and suffer them to
go on. He quarrelled with his mistress in public ; she
called him an idiot, and he called her a jade. He
woidd leave her in the morning, "so that the very
sentrys speak of it."^ He suffered her to play hini
false before the eyes of all ; at one time she received a
couple of actors, one of whom was a mountebank. If
need were, she would use abusive language to him.

,^ Pepi/s* Diary, ii. January 1, 1662-1663.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 341

" The King hath declared that he did not get the child
of which she is conceived at this time. But she told
him, " . . . ! but you shaR own it." ^ Whereupon he
did acknowledge the child, and took to himself a couple
of actresses for consolation. When his new wife,
Catherine of Braganza, arrived, he drove away her
attendants, used coarse language to her, that he might
force on her the familiarities of his mistress, and
finished by degrading her to a friendship such as this.
The good Pepys, not4hstanding his loyS feelings, ends
by saying, having heard the king and the duke talk,
and seeing and observing their manner of discourse,
" God forgive me ! though I admire them with aU the
duty possible, yet the more a man considers and
observes them, the less he finds of difference between
them and other men, though, blessed be Gk)d ! they are
both princes of 'great nobleneas and spirits." ' He
heard that, on a certain day, the king was so besotted
with Mrs. Stewart that he gets " into comers, and will
be with her half an hour together kissing her to the
observation of aU the world." * Another day. Captain
Ferrers told him " how, at a ball at Court, a child was
dropped by one of the ladies in dancing." They took
it off in a handkerchief, " and the King had it in his
closet a week after, and did dissect it, making great
sport of it."* These ghastly freaks and these lewd
events make us shudder. The courtiers went with the
stream. Miss Jennings, who became Duchess of Tyr-
connel, disguised herself one day as an orange girl, and
cried her wares in the street* Pepys recounts festi-
vities in which lords and ladies smeared one another's

1 Pepys' Diary, iv. July 30, 1667.
« Ibid. iii. July 26, 1665. > Ihid. iL Nov. 9, 1663.

♦ Ibid, ii Feb. 8, 17, 1662-8. » IHd. Feb. 21, 1664-1666.

- -. . - . . . '1

-iir". :: ::.v "wrzL-jv

-' -_i^ ".r-I 1'--'- '•'i*- :_-_•: ri'J.t: r:.L.L:: .r : n-Jtsil

, ii A _. ■ T ii- . .— T .- ..^T .-._..* •■ A..^..«UillC

!:■::_ :.">: :._* :.?:.: •:- - -il. v i v. ::.::;n irjm
ItT'- ' l-..:. ~^1 j-rr.r : : r:L..:..] ".r : Krre I first

':v .. :_•••:::..• ■:' s.:-.r y i^j : :a '.r?. 'sri.crt be was
ii^ I.J :1.-L.. a!.: iLV L. Iv }'...-:-::r: aii.i i:rr ladies;

::.r "iv.-rl I."- TLr 3:..ir.».-ll..-:i :3Jl:: is. ih:*: iliis fair is
n ■: ».-•...-!: i:.,y; ::.»_-^r j-t- -jle ^vt-Iv m:5iin:hr»«]»io. and
l-r-ii::*.' i:."i^«S'.- ; ll.vv i|i;Mttr iljt: ;:l'H-imy Hol''i»e.s and he
if liiriv 2jifi.st».r. In IVi-.t. ilie I'liiKisoj-hy of Hobltes
shall dve us ilie Ia<t 'n-«..rJ and the last characteristics
of ihi.- »«.>cielv.

V.
Ilrililx'S was one of tlmse ]>owerful, liniiteil, and, as
they are called, positive minds, so common in England,
of the pchriol of Swift and IJentham, efficacious and

* Tli« author has inadvertoiitly confound«il **my IjiJy Bennet"
^l^lhe Counteu of Arlingtou. See Ptj»js' Diary, iv. Maiy 30, 1C6S,
*.— Tu.

/

J

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 343

remorseless as an iron machine. Hence we find in him
a method and style of surprising dryness and vigour,
most adapted to build up and pull down; hence a
philosophy which, by the audacity of its teaching, has
placed in an undying light one of the indestruct-
ible phases of the human mind. In every object,
every event, there is some primitive and constant fact,
which forms, as it were, the nucleus around which
group themselves the various developments which
complete it The positive mind swoops down imme-
diately upon this nucleus, crushes the brilliant growth
which covers it ; disperses, annihilates it ; then, concen-
trating upon it the full force of its violent grasp, loosens
it, raises it up, shapes it, and lifts it into a conspicuous
position, from whence it may henceforth shine out to all
men and for all time like a crystal All ornament, all
emotions, are excluded from the style of Hobbes ; it is
a mere aggregate of arguments and concise facts in a
small space, united together by deduction, as by iron
bands. There are no tints, no fine or unusual word.
He makes use only of words most familiar to common
and lasting usage ; there are not a dozen employed by
him which, during two hundred years, have grown
obsolete ; he pierces to the root of all sensation, removes
the transient and brilliant externals, narrows the solid
portion which is the permanent subject-matter of all
thought, and the proper object of common intelligence.
He curtails throughout in order to strengthen ; he attains
solidity by suppression. Of aU the bonds which connect
ideas, he retains but one, and that the most stable ; his
style is only a continuous chain of reasoning of the most
stubborn description, wholly made up of additions and
subtractions, reduced to a combination of certain simple

344 THE CLASSIC AGK book m.

ideas, which added on to or diminishing from one
another, make up. under various n^imes. the totals or
diiierences, of which we are for erer either studying the
fonnation or unravelling the elements. He pursued
beforehand the metbid oi Condillae, beginning with
tracing to the original fact, palpablv and clearly, so as
to pursue step by step the filiation and parentage of
the ideas of which this primaiy fact is the stock, in
such a manner that the reader, conducted from total to
total, mav at anv moment test the exactness of his
operation, and verify the truth of his results. Such a
logical system cuts across the grain of prejudice with
a mechanical stiffness and boldness. Hobbes clears
science of scholastic words and theories. He laughs
doiiTi quiddities, he does away with rational and intelli-
gible classifications, he rejects the authority of refer-
ences.^ He cuts, as with a surgeon's knife, at the heart
of the most li\'ing creeds. He denies the authenticity
of the books of Moses, Joshua, and the lika He
declares that no argument proves the di\inity of Scrip-
ture, and that, in order to believe it, every man requires
a supernatural and personal revelation. He upsets in
half-a-dozen words the authority of this and every other
revelation.^ He reduces man to a mere body, the soul

^ Though I reverence those men of ancient times that either have
written truth perspicuously, or set it in a better way to find it out our-
selves, yet to the antiquity itself, I think nothing due ; for if we
reverence the age, the present is the oldest. — Hobbes* Works, Moles-
worth, 11 vols. 8vo, 1839-45, iiL 712.

' " To say he hath spoken to him in a dream, is no more than to
say he dreame<l that God spake to him. ... To say he hath seen a vision
or heard a voice, is to say that he has dreamed between sleeping and wak-
ing. ... To say he speaks by supernatural inspiration, is to say he finds
an ardent desiue to speak, or some strong opinion of himself for which he
can allege no sufficient and natural reason. " — Ibid, iiL 361-2.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 345

to a function, God, to an unkuovn existeace. His
phrases read like equations or mathematical results. In
fact it ia from mathematics ' that he derives the idea
of all science. He would reconstitute moral science
on the same basis. He assigns to it this foimdation
when he lajs dovn that sensation is an internal move-
ment caused hy an external shock ; desire, an internal
movement toward an external object; and he builds
npon these two notions the whole system of morals.
Again, be assigns to morals a mathematical method,
when he distinguishes, like the geometrician, between
two simple ideas, which he transforms by degrees into
two more complex ; and when on the basis of sensation
and desire he constructs the passions, the r%hts, and
institutions of man, just as the geometrician out of
straight lines and curves constructs all the varieties of
figure. To morals he gives a mathematical aspect, by
mapping out the incomplete and rigid construction of
human life, like the network of imaginary forms which
geometricians have conceived. For the iirst time
there was discernible in him, as in Descartes, but
exaggerated and standing out more conspicuously, that
species of intellect which produced the classic age in
Europe t not the independence of inspiration and
genius which marked the Cenaissance ; not the mature
experimental methods and conceptions of a^regates
which distinguish the present age, hut the independence

' " From the principfd parts of Natnre, Bessoo, uid Paaaion, luve
proceeded two kinds of learning, mtU/ieyaatieai and dogmaiical. The
foRuer is free trom controvera; and diipate, because it consistetli in
comparing figure and motion only, in wMcli things tnUh and tA< interett
ef men oppose not each other. But in the other there is nothing
nndispntable, because it compares men, and meddles with tbeit right and
profit"— Hobbea' Worku, Motesworth, 1 1 vok Sro, ISSMfi, ir. Epis. ded.

346 THE CLASSIC A6K book m.

of argumentatiYe teasoning, which dispensmg with the
imagination, liberating itself from tradition, badly prac^
tising experience, acknowledges its queen in logic, its
model in mathematics, its instrument in ratiocination,
its audience in polished society, its employment in
average truth, its subject-matter in abstract humanity,
its formula in ideology, and in the French Bevolution
at once its glory and its condemnation, its triumph and
its close.

But whereas Descartes, in the midst of a purified
society and religion, noble and calm, enthroned intelli-
gence and elevated man, Hobbes, in the midst of an
overthrown society and a religion run mad, d^raded man
and enthroned matter. Through disgust of Puritanism,
the courtiers reduced human existence to an animal
licentiousness ; through disgust of Puritanism, Hobbes
reduced human nature to its merely animal aspect.
The courtiers were practically atheists and brutish^ as
he was atheistic and brutish in the pro\'ince of specu-
lation. They had established the fashion of instinct
and egotism ; he wrote the philosophy of egotism and
instinct. They had wiped out from their hearts all
refined and noble sentiments ; he wiped out from the
heart all noble and refined sentiment. He arranged
their manners into a theory, gave them the manual of
their conduct, wrote down beforehand the maxims
which they were to reduce to practice.^ With him,
as with them, "the greatest good is the preservation
of life and limb ; the greatest evil is death, especially
with pain." Other goods and other evils are only the
means of these. None seek or wish for anything
but that which is pleasurable. " No man gives except

* His chief works were written between 1646 and 1655.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 347

for a personal advantage." Why are friendships good
things? "Because they are useful; friends serve for
defence and otherwise." Why do we pity one another ?
"Because we imagine that a similar misfortune may
befall ourselves." Why is it noble to pardon him who
asks it ? " Because thus one proves confidence in self."
Such is the background of the human heart. Consider
now what becomes of the most precious flowers in these
bUghting hands. " Music, painting, poetry, are agree-
able as imitations which recall the past, because if the
past was good, it is agreeable in its imitation as a good
thing ; but if it was bad, it is agreeable in its imitation
as being past" To this gross mechanism he reduces
the fine arts; it was perceptible in his attempt to
translate the Uiad, In his sight, philosophy is a thing
of like kind. " Wisdom is serviceable, because it has
in it some kind of protection ; if it is desirable in itself,
it is because it is pleasant" Thus thfere is no dignity in
knowledge. It is a pastime or an assistance ; good, as a
servant or a puppet is a good thing. Money being more
serviceable, is worth more. "Not he who is wise is rich, as
the Stoics say ; but, on the contrary, he who is rich is
wise."^ As to religion, it is but "the fear of an in-

^ Kemo dat nisi respiciens ad bonum sibi.

Amicitis bonse, nempe utiles. Nam amicitis cum ad multa alia,
turn ad praesidium conferunt.

Sapientia utile. Nam pnesidium in se habet nonnullum. Etiam
appetibile est per se, id est jucundum. Item pulchrum, quia acquisitu
difficilis.

Non enim qui sapiens est, ut dixere stoici, dives est, sed contra qui
dives est sapiens est dicendus est.

Ignoscere veniam petenti pulchrum. Nam indicium fiducise sui.

Imitatio jucundum : revocat enim prseterita. Prseterita autem si
bona fnerint, jucunda sunt reprsesentata, quia bona; si mala, quia
prseterita. Jucunda igitur musica, poesis pictura. — Hobbes' Opera
LatinOf Molesworth, voL ii. 98-102.

348 THE CLASSIC AGE. book hi.

visible power, whether this be a figment, or adopted
from history by general consent."^ Indeed, this was
true for a Rochester or a Charles II. ; cowards or bullies,
superstitious or blasphemers, they conceived of nothing
beyond. Neither is there any natural right " Before
men were bound by contract one with another, each
had the right to do what he would against whom he
would." Nor any natural friendship. " All association
is for the cause of advantage or of glory, that is, for love
of one's self, not of one's associates. The origin of great
and durable associations is not mutual well-wishing but
mutual fear. The desire of injuring is innate in alL
Man is to man a wolf. . . . Warfare was the natural
condition of men before societies were formed ; and this
not incidentally, but of aU against aU : and this war is
of its own nature eternal"^ Sectarian violence let
loose, the conflict of ambitions, the fall of governments,
the overflow of soured imaginations and malevolent
passions, had raised up this idea of society and of man-
kind. One and all, philosophers and people, yearned
for monarchy and repose. Hobbes, an inexorable
logician, would have it absolute; repression would

^ Metus potentiaram invisibilium, sive fict® illae sint, sive ab
historiis accept® sint publice, religio est si publice acceptie non sint,
superstitio. — Hobbes' Opera Latina^ Molesworth, iii. 46.

' Omnis igitur societas vel commodi causa vel glorise, hoc est, sol,
non sociorum amore contrahitur. — Ihid. iL 161.

Statucndum igitur est, originem magnarum et diuturnamm socie-
tatum non a mutua hominum benevolentia, sed a mutuo metu ezstitisse.
—Ihid. ii 161.

Voluntas Isedendi omnibus quidem inest in statu naturse. — Ibid, iL
162.

Status hominum naturalis antequam in societatem coiretur bellnm
fuerit ; neque hoc simpliciter, sed bellum omnium in omnes. — Ihid. ii.
166.

Bellum sua nature sempiteroum. — See 166, I. 16.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 349

thus be more stern, peace more lasting. The sove-
reign should be unopposed. Whatsoever he might do
against a subject, under whatever pretext, would not be
injustice. He ought to decide upon the canonical books.
He was pope, and more than pope. Were he to com-
mand it, his subjects should renounce Christ, at least
with their mouth; the original contract has given up
to him, without any reservation, all responsibility of
external actions ; at least, according to this view, the
sectarian will no longer have the pretext of his con-
science in harassing the state. To such extremities had
the intense weariness and horror of civil war driven a
narrow but logical intellect. Upon the secure den in
which he had with every effort imprisoned and confined
the evil beast of prey, he laid as a final weight, in order
that he might perpetuate the captivity of humanity, the
whole philosophy and theory not simply of man, but of
the remainder of the universe. He reduced judgment
to the " combination of two terms," ideas to conditions
of the brain, sensations to motions of the body, general
laws to simple words, all substance to corporeality, all
science to the knowledge of sensible bodies, the human
being to a body capable of motion given or received ;
so that man, recognising himself and nature only under
this despised form, and degraded in his conception of
himself and of the world, might bow beneath the burden
of a necessary authority, and submit in the end to the
yoke which his rebellious nature rejects, yet is forced to
tolerate.^ Such, in brief, is the aim which this spec-

^ Corpus et substantia idem significant, et proinde vox composita
substantia incorporea est insignificans seque ac si quis diceret corpus
incorporeum. — Hobbes* Oj)era LcUinOy Molesworth, iii 281.

Quidquid imaginamur finitum est. NuUa ergo est idea neqne con-
ceptus qui oriri potest a yoce hac, infinitum. — Ibid. iiL 20.

350 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

tacle of the English Bestoration suggests. Men deserved
then this treatment, because they gave birth to this
philosophy ; they were represented on the stage as they
had proved themselves to be in theoiy and in manners.

VI.

When the theatres, which Parliament had closed,
were re-opened, the change of public taste was soon
manifested. Shirley, the last of the grand old school,
wrote and lived no longer. Waller, Buckingham, and
Dryden were compelled to dish up the plays of Shak-
speare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and to adapt them
to the modem style. Pepys, who went to see J/u2-
summer Nights Dream, declared that he would never go
there again ; " for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play
that ever I saw in my life."^ Comedy was transformed ;
the fact was, that the public was transformed.

What an audience was that of Shakspeare and Beau-
mont and Fletcher ! What youthful and delightful souls !
In this evil-smelling room in which it was necessary to
bum jumper, before that miserable half-lighted stage,
before decorations worthy of an alehouse, with men play-
ing the women's parts, illusion enchained them. They
scarcely troubled themselves about probabilities ; they
could be carried in an instant over forest and ocean,
from clime to cUme, across twenty years of time, through

Recidit itaque ratiocinatio omnis ad doas operationes animi, addi-
tionem et sabstractionem. — Hobbes* Opera Latino, Molesworth, L.S.

Nomina signa sunt non renun sed cogitationem. — Ibid, L 15.

Veritas enim in dicto non in re consistit. — Ibid, L 81.

Sensio igitur in sentiente nihil aliud esse potest prseter motnm
partium aliquarum intus in sentiente existentium, quae partes mota
organorum quibus sentimas partes sunt — ibid, L 817.

» Pepys* Diary, ii. Sept. 29, 1662.

COAT. I. THE RESTORATIOK. 351

ten battles and all the hurty of adventure. They did
not care to be always laughing ; comedy, after a burst
of buffoonery, resumed ite serious or tender tone. They
came less to be amused than to musa In these fresh
tninds, amidst a woof of passions and dreams, there were
hidden passions and brilliant dreams whose imprisoned
Bwarm buzzed indistinctly, waiting for the poet to come
and lay bare to them the novelty and the splendour of
heaven. Landscapes revealed by a lightning flash, the
gray mane of a long and overhanging billow, a wet
forest nook where the deer raise their startled heads,
the sadden smile and purpling cheek of a young girl
in love, the sublime eiul various flight of dl delicate
sentiments, a cloak o£ ecstatic and romantic passion
over all, — these were the si^ts and feelings which
th£y came to seek. Hey raised themselves without
any assistance to the summit of the world of ideas ; they
desired to contemplate extreme generosity, absolute love
they were not astonished at the sight of fairy-land ; they
entered wiUiout an efibrt into the region of poetical
transformation, whose light was necessary to their eyes.
They took in at a glance its excesses and its caprices ;
they needed no preparation ; they followed its digres-
sions, its whimsicalities, the crowding of its abundant
creations, the sudden prodigality of its high colouring,
as a musician follows a symphony. They were in that
transient and strained condition in which the imagin-
ation, adult and pure, laden with desue, curiosity, force,
envelops man alt at once, and in that man the moat
exalted and exquisite fedinga.

The raisteieiB took the place of these. They were
rich, they had tried to deck themselves with the polish
of Frenchmen; they added to the st^e moveable decora-

352 THE CLASSIC AGK book ni.

tions, music, lights, probability, comfort, every external
aid; but they wanted heart, Imagine those foppish
and half-intoxicated men, who saw in love nothing
beyond desire, and in man nothing beyond sensuality ;
Rochester in the place of Mercutio. What part of his
soul could comprehend poesy and fancy ? The comedy
of romance was altogether beyond his reach ; he could
only seize the actual world, and of this world but the
palpable and gross externals. Give him an exact
picture of ordinary life, commonplace and probable
occurrences, literal imitations of what he himself was
and did ; lay the scene in London, in the current year ;
copy his coarse words, his brutal jokes, his conversation
with the orange girls, his rendem^ous in the park, his
attempts at French dissertation. Let him recognise
himself, let him find again the people and the manners
he had just left behind him in the tavern or the ante-
chamber ; let the theatre and the street reproduce one
another. Comedy will give him the same entertain-
ment as real life ; he will wallow equally well there in
vulgarity and lewdness; to be present there will
demand neither imagination nor wit ; eyes and memory
are the only requisites. This exact imitation will
amuse him and instruct him at the same time. Filthy
words will make liim laugh tlirough s}Tnpathy ; shame-
less imagery will divert liim by appealing to his
recollections. The author, too, will take care to arouse
him by his plot, which generally has the deceiving of a
father or a husband for its subject. The fine gentlemen
agree with the author in siding with the gallant ; they
follow his fortunes with interest, and fancy that they
themselves have the same success with the fair. Add
to this, women debauched, and willing to be debauched ;

CHIP. I. THE RESTORATION. 353

and it is manifest how these provocations, these
manners of prostitutes, that interchange of exchanges
and surprises, that carnival of rendezvous and suppers,
the impudence of the scenes only stopping short of
physical demonstration, those songs with their double
meaning, that coarse slang shouted loudly and replied
to amidst the tableaux vivaiUs, all that stage-imitation of
orgie, must have stirred up t^e innermost feelings of
the habitual practisers of intrigue. And what ia more,
the theatre gave its sanction to tiieir manners. By
representing nothing but vice, it authorised their vices.
Authors laid it down as a rule, that all women were
impudent hussies, and that all men were brutes.
Debauchery in their bands became a matter of course,
nay more, a matter of good taste; they profess it.
Bochester and Charles II. could quit the theatre highly
edi£ed; more con^anced than they were before that
virtue was only a pretence, the pretence of clever
rascals who wanted to sell themselves dear.

VII.
Dryden, who was amongst the first ^ to adopt this
view of the matter, did not adopt it heartily. A kind
of hazy mist, the relic of the fonner age, still floated
over his plays. His wealthy imagination half bound
him to the comedy of romance. At one time he
adapted Milton's Paradise, Shakspeare's Tempest, and
TtoHus and Cressida. Another time he imitated, in
Love in a NunTicry, in Marriage A la Mode, in TTie Mock
Astrologer, the imbroglios and surprises of the Spanish
stage. Sometimes he displays the sparkling images

> His Wild OaOcmt dates &om 1662.
VOL. U. 2 A

354 THE CLASSIC AG^. book m.

and lofty metaphors of the older national poets, some-
times the affected figures of speech and cavilling wit of
Calderon and Lope de Vega. He mingles the tragic
and the humorous, the overthrow of thrones and die
ordinary description of manners. But in this awkward
compromise the poetic spirit of ancient comedy dis-
appears ; only the dress and the gilding remain. The
new characters are gross and immoral, with the instincts
of a lackey beneath the dress of a lord ; which is the
more shocking, because by it Dryden contradicts his
own talents, being at bottom grave and a poet; he
foUows the fashion, and not his own mind; he plays
the libertine with deliberate forethought, to adapt him-
self to the taste of the day.^ He plays the blackguard
awkwardly and dogmatically; he is impious without
enthusiasm, and in measured periods. One of his
gallants cries :

" Is not love love without a priest and altars )
The temples are inanimate, and know not
What vows are made in them ; the priest stands ready
For his hire, and cares not what hearts he couples ;
Love alone is marriage." ^

Hippolita says, "I wished the ball might be kept
perpetually in our cloister, and that half the handsome

^ " We love to get our mistresses, and purr over them, as cats do
over mice, and let them get a little way ; and all th6 pleasure is to pat
them back again." — Mock Astrologer, ii. 1.

Wildblood says to his mistress : " I am none of those unreasonable
lovers that propose to themselves the loving to eternity. A month is
commonly my stint.** And Jacintha replies : " Or would not a fort-
night serve our turn ?" — Mock Astrologer, ii 1.

Frequently one would think Dryden was translating Hobbes, by the
harshness of his jests.

' Love in a Ntmnery, ii 3.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 355

nuns in it might be turned to men, for the sake of the
other." ^ Dryden has no tact or contrivance. In his
Spanish Friar, the queen, a good enough woman, tells
Torrismond that she is going to have the old dethroned
king put to death, in order to marry him, Torrismond,
more at her ease. Presently she is informed that the
murder is completed. " What hinders now," says she,
" but that the holy priest, in secret joins our mutual
vows ? and then this night, this happy night, is yours
and mine."^ Side by side with this sensual tragedy, a
comic intrigue, pushed to the most indecent familiarity,
exhibits the love of a cavalier for a married woman, who
in the end turns out to be his sister. Dryden dis-
covers nothing in this situation to shock him. He
has lost the commonest repugnances of natural modesty.
Translating any pretty broad play, Amphitryon for
instance, he finds it too pure ; he strips off aU its small
delicacies, and enlarges its very improprieties.^ Thus
Jupiter says :

*' For kings and priests are m a manner bound,
For reverence sake, to be close hypocrites." *

And he proceeds thereupon boldly to lay bare his own

^ Love in a Nunnery ^ iii 3.

* Spanish Friar, iii 8. And jumbled up with the plot we keep
meetiiig with political allusions. This is a mark of the time. Torris-
mond, to excuse himself from manying the queen, says, " Power which
in one age is tyranny is ripen'd in the next to true succession. She's
in possession.'* — Spanish Friar, iv. 2.

• Plautus' Amphitryon has been imitated by Dryden and Moli^re.
Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to Dryden's play, says: " He is,
in general, coarse and vulgar, where Moli^re is witty ; and where the
Frenchman yentures upon a double meaning, the Englishman always
contrives to make it a single one." — ^Tb.

^ Amphitryon, L 1.

356 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m,

despotism. In reality, his sophisms and his shameless-
ness serve Dryden as a means of decrying by rebound
the arbitrary Divinity of the theologians. He lets
Jupiter say :

" Fate is what I,

By virtue of omnipotence, have made it ;

And power omnipotent can do no wrong !

Not to myself, because I will it so ;

Nor yet to men, for what they are is mine. —

This night I will enjoy Amphitryon's wife ;

For when I made her, I decreed her such

As I should please to love." ^

This open pedantry is changed into open lust as soon as
Jupiter sees Alcmena. No detail is omitted : Jupiter
speaks his whole mind to her, and before the maids ;
and next morning, when he is going away, she outdoes
him : she hangs on to him, and indulges in the most
familiar details. All the noble externals of high gallantry
are torn off like a troublesome garment ; it is a cynical
recklessness in place of aristocratic decency ; the scene
is written after the example of Charles II. and Castle-
maine, not of Louis XIV. and Mme. de Montespan.*

* Amphitryon^ i. 1.

' As Jupiter is departing, on the plea of daylight, Alcmena says to

him :

" But you and I will draw our curtains close,

FiXtinguish daylight, and put out the sun.

Come back, my lord. . . .

You have not yet laid long enough in bed

To warm your widowed side." — Act ii. 2.

Compare Plautus' Roman matron and Molifere's honest French-
woman with this expansive female. [Louis XIV. and Made, de Monte-
span were not very decent either. See M€moires de Saint Simon.] — Tb.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 357

VIII.
I pass over several writers : Crowne, author of Sir
Courtly Nice; Shadwell, an imitator of Ben Jonson;
Mrs. Aphra Behn, who calls herself Astraea, a spy and
a courtesan, paid by government and the public.
Etherege is the first to set the example of imitative
comedy in his Man of Fashion, and to depict only the
manners of his age ; for the r«st he is an open roisterer,
and frankly describes his habits :

" From hunting whores, and haunting play.
And minding nothing all the day,
And all the night too, you will say." ...

Such were his pursuits in London ; and further on, in a
letter from Eatisbon to Lord Middleton,

" He makes grave legs in formal fetters,
Converses with fools and writes dull letters ; "

and gets small consolation out of the German ladies.
In this grave mood Etherege undertook the duties of
an ambassador. One day, having dined too freely, he
fell from the top of a staircase, and broke his neck ; a
death of no great importance. But the hero of this
society was William Wycherley, the coarsest writer who
ever polluted the stage. Being sent to France during
the Revolution, he there became a Roman Catholic;
then on his return abjured ; then in the end, as Pope tells
us, abjured again. Robbed of their Protestant ballast,
these shallow brains ran from dogma to dogma, from
superstition to incredulity or indifference, to end in a state
of fear. He had learnt at M. de Montausier^s^ residence

^ Himself a Huguenot, who had become a Roman Catholic, and the
husband of Julie d'Angennes, for whom the French poets composed the
Celebrated Ouirlandt, — Tb.

858 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

the art of wearing gloves and a peruke, which sufficed
in those days to make a gentleman. This merit, and
the success of a filthy piece. Love in a Wood, drew upon
him the eyes of the Duchess of Cleveland, mistress of
the king and of anybody. This woman, who used to
have amours with a rope-dancer, picked him up one
day in the very midst of the Ring. She put her head
out of her carriage-window, and cried to him before aU,

" Sir, you are a rascal, a villain, the son of a /'

Touched by this compliment, he accepted her favours,
and in consequence obtained those of the king. He
lost them, married the Countess of Drogheda, a woman
of bad temper, ruined himself, remained seven years in
prison, passed the remainder of his life in pecuniary
difficulties, regretting his youth, losing his memory,
scribbling bad verses, which he got Pope to correct,
amidst many twitches of wounded self-esteem, stringing
together dull obscenities, dragging his worn out body
and enervated brain through the stages of misanthropy
and libertinage, playing the miserable part of a tooth-
less roisterer and a white-haired blackguard. Eleven
days before his death he married a young girl, who
turned out to be a strumpet He ended as he had
begun, by stupidity and misconduct, having succeeded
neither in becoming happy nor honest, having used his
vijgorous intelligence and real talent only to his own
injury and the injury of others.

The reason was, that Wycherley was not an epicurean
bom. His nature, genuinely English, that is to say,
energetic and sombre, rebelled against the easy and
amiable carelessness which enables one to take life as
a pleasure-party. His style is laboured, and trouble-
some to read. His tone is virulent and bitter. He

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION, 359

frequently forces his comedy in order to get at spiteful
satire. Effort and animosity mark aU that he says or
puts into the mouths of others. It is Hobbes, not
meditative and calm, but active and angry, who sees in
man nothing but vice, yet feels himself man to the very
core. The only fault he rejects is hypocrisy ; the only
virtue he preaches is frankness. He wants others to
confess their vice, and he begins by confessing his own.
" Though I cannot lie like them (the poets), I am as
vain as they ; I cannot but publicly give your Grace
my humble acknowledgments. . . . This is the poet's
gratitude, which in plain English is only pride and
ambition." ^ We find in him no poetry of expression,
no glimpse of the ideal, no settled morality which
could console, raise, or purify men. He shuts them up
in their perversity and imcleanness, and installs him-
self among them. He shows them the filth of the
lowest depths in which he confines them ; he expects
them to breathe this atmosphere; he plimges them
into it, not to disgust them with it as by an accidental
fall, but to accustom them to it as if it were their
natural element He tears down the partitions and
decorations by which they endeavour to conceal their
state, or regulate their disorder. He takes pleasure in
making them fight, he delights in the hubbub of their
unfettered instincts; he loves the violent changes of
the human mass, the confusion of their wicked deeds,
the rawness of their bruises. He strips their lusts,
sets them forth at full length, and of course feels them
himself; and whilst he condemns them as nauseous,

* The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vdnbrugh, and
Farquhar^ ed. Leigh Hunt, 1840. Dedication of Love in a Wood to
her Grace the Duchess of Cleveland.

360 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

he enjoys them. People take what pleasure they can
get : the drunkards in the suburbs, if asked how they
can relish their miserable liquor, will teU you it makes
them drunk as soon as better stuff, and that is the only
pleasure they have.

I can understand that an author may dare much in
a novel. It is a psychological study, akin to criticism
or history, having almost equal license, because it con-
tributes almost equally to explain the anatomy of the
heart. It is quite necessary to expose moral diseases,
especially when this is done to add to science, coldly,
accurately, and in the fashion of a dissection. Such a
book is by its nature abstruse ; it must be read in the
study, by lamp-light. But transport it to the stage,
exaggerate the bed-room liberties, give them additional
life by a few disreputable scenes, bestow bodily vigour
upon them by the energetic action and words of the
actresses; let the eyes and the senses be filled with
them, not the eyes of an individual spectator, but of a
thousand men and women mingled together in the pit,
excited by the interest of the story, by the correctness
of the literal imitation, by the glitter of the lights, by
the noise of applause, by the contagion of impressions
which run like a shudder through fiery and longing
minds. That was the spectacle which Wycherley
furnished, and which the court appreciated. Is it
possible that a public, and a select public, could come
and listen to such scenes ? In Love in a Wood, amidst
the complications of nocturnal rendezvous, and viola-
tions effected or begun, we meet with a witling, named
Dapperwit, who desires to sell his mistress Lucy to a
fine gentleman of that age, Ranger. With what mi-
nuteness he bepraises her I He knocks at her door ; the

r\

0BA7. 1. THE RESTORATION. 361

intended purchaser meantime, growing impatient, is
treating him like a slave. The mother comes in, but
Tvishiug to sell Lncy herself and for her own advantage,
scolds them and packs them off. Next appears an old
puritanical usurer and hypocrite, named Gripe, who at
first will not bargain : —

" Mti. Joyner. Tou miut send for Bomething to eotertain her
with. . . . Upon my life a groat ! what will thie porchase t

Gript. Two black pots of ale and a cake, at the cellar. —
Come, the wine has arsenic in't. . . .

Mrt. J. A treat of a groat 1 I will not wag.

0. Why dont you go t Here, take more money, and fetch
what you will ; take here, half-a-crown.

Mn. J. What will half-a-crown do I

G. Take a crown then, an angel, a piece ; — ^begone !

Mr*. J. A treat only will not serve my turn ; I must buy
the poor wretch there aome toys.

O. What toya f what 1 speak quickly.

Mr$. J. Pendants, necklaces, fans, ribbons, points, laces,
stockings, gloves. . . .

Q. But here, take half a piece for the other things.

Mrt. J. Half a piece ! —

G. Prithee, begone ! — take t'other piece then — two pieces —
three pieces — five ! here ; 'tis all I have.

Mr>. J, I must have the broad-seal ring too, or I stir not." ^

She goes away at last, having extorted all, and Lucy
plays the innocent, seems to think that Gripe is a
dancing-master, and asks for a lesson. What scenes,
what double meanings ! At last she calls out, her
mother, Mrs. Crossbite, breaks open the door, and
enters with men placed there beforehand; Gripe ia

362 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

caught in the trap ; they threaten to call in the con-
stable, they swindle him out of five hundred pounds.

Need I recount the plot of the CourUry Wife f It
is useless to wish to skim the subject only; we
sink deeper and deeper. Homer, a gentleman re-
turned from France, spreads the report that he is no
longer able to trouble the peace of husbands. You
may imagine what becomes of such a subject in Wy-
cherley's hands, and he draws from it all that it
contains. Women converse about Homer's condition,
even before him ; they suffer themselves to be unde-
ceived, and boast of it. Three of them come to him
and feast, drink, sing — such songs ! The excess of
orgie triumphs, adjudges itself the crown, displays itself
in maxims. " Our virtue," says one of them, " is like
the statesman's religion, the quaker's word, the game-
sterns oath, and the great man's honour; but to cheat
those that trust us."^ In the last scene, the suspicions
which had been aroused, are set at rest by a new de-
claration of Homer. All the marriages are polluted,
and the carnival ends by a dance of deceived husbands.
To crown all, Homer recommends his example to the
public, and the actress who comes on to recite the
epilogue, completes the shamefulness of the piece, by
warning gallants that they must look what they are
doing ; for that if they can deceive men, " we women
— there's no cozening us." ^

But the special and most extraordinary sign of the
times is, that amid all these provocatives, no repellent
circumstance is omitted, and that the narrator seems to

» T?ie Country TFi/e, v. 4.

' Read the epilogue, and see what words and details authors dand
then to put in the mouths of actresses. ,

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 363

aim as much at disgusting as at depraving us.^ Every
moment the fine gentlemen, even the ladies, introduce
into their conversation the ways and means by which,
since the sixteenth century, love has endeavoured to
adorn itself. Dapperwit, when making an offer of Lucy,
says, in order to account for the delay: "Pish! give
her but leave to . . . put on . . . the long patch imder
the left eye ; awaken the roses on her cheeks with some
Spanish wool, and warrant her breath with some lemon-
peeL" * Lady Flippant, alone in the park, cries out :
" Unfortunate lady that I am ! I have left the herd on
purpose to be chased, and have wandered this hour
here ; but the park affords not so much as a satyr for
me; and no Burgundy man or drunken scourer will
reel my way. The rag-women and cinder-women have
better luck than I." ^

Judge by these quotations, which are the best, of the
remainder ! Wycherley makes it his business to revolt
even the senses ; the nose, the eyes, everything suffers in
his plays ; the audience must have had the stomach of a
sailor. And from this abyss English literature has as-
cended to the strict morality, the excessive decency
which it now possesses ! This stage is a declared war
against beauty and delicacy of every kind. K Wycherley
borrows a character anywhere, it is only to do violence,

^ " That spark, who has his fruitless designs upon the bed-ridden
rich widow, down to the sucking heiress in her . . . clout." — Love
in a Wood, L 2.

Mrs. Flippant : " Though I had married the fool, I thought to have
reserved the wit as well as other ladies." — Ibid,

Dapperwit : " I will contest with no rival, not with my old rival
your coachman." — Ibid.

" She has a complexion like a holland cheese, and no more teeth left,
than such as give a haut goiit to her breath." — Ibid, ii. 1.

* Love in a Wood, iii 2. * Ilnd. v. 2.

364 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

or degrade it to the level of his own characters. If he
imitates the Agnes of Moli^re/ as he does in the Country
Wife, he marries her in order to profane marriage, de-
prives her of honour, still more of modesty, still more of
grace, and changes her artless tenderness into shameless
instincts and scandalous confessions. If he takes
Shakespeare's Viola, as in the Plain Dealer, it is to drag
her through the vileness of infamy, amidst brutalities
and surprises. If he translates the part of Moli^re's
C^lim^ne, he ^vipes out at one stroke the manners of a
great lady, the woman's delicacy, the t€U5t of the lady of
the house, the politeness, the refined air, the superiority
of wit and knowledge of the world, in order to substi-
tute for them the impudence and deceit of a foul-
mouthed courtesan. If he invents an abnost innocent
girl, Hippolita,^ he begins by putting into her mouth
words that will not bear transcribing. Whatever he
does or says, whether he copies or originates, blames or
praises, his stage is a defamation of mankind, which
repels even when it attracts, and which sickens a man
while it corrupts.

A certain gift hovers over all — namely, vigour —

^ The letter of Agnes, in Molifere's TEcoU des Femmes, iiL 4, "begins
thus: **Je veux vous ^crire, et je suis bien en peine par ou je m*y
prendrai. J'ai des pensees que je d^sirerais que vous sussiez ; mais je
ne sals comment faire pour vous les dire, et je me defie de mes paroles,"
etc. Observe how Wycherley translates it : ** Dear, sweet Mr. Homer,
my husband would have me send you a base, rude, unmannerly letter ;
but I won't — and would have me forbid you loving me ; but I won't —
and would have me say to you, I hate you, poor Mr. Homer ; but I
won't tell a lie for him — for I'm sure if you and I were in the coontiy
at cards together, I could not help treading on your toe under the
table, or mbbing knees with you, and staring in your face, till you saw
me, and then looking down, and blushing for an hour together," etc
— Country Wife^ iv. 2.

* In the Oentleman Dancing-Master,

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 365

which is never absent in England, and gives a peenliar
character to their virtnes as well as to their vices.
When we have removed the oratorical and heavily con-
structed phrases imitated from the French, we get at the
genuine English talent — a deep sympathy with nature
and life. Wycherley possessed that lucid and \igorous
perspicacity which in any particular situation seizes upon
gesture, physical expression, evident detail, which pierces
to the depths of the crude and base, which hits off, not
men in general, and passion as it ought to be, but an in-
dividual man, and passion as it is. He is a realist, not
of set purpose, as the realists of our day, but naturaUy.
In a violent manner he lays on his plaster over the
grinning and pimpled faces of his rascals, in order to
bring before our very eyes the stem mask to which the
living imprint of their ugliness has stuck on the way.
He crams his plays with incident, he multiplies action,
he pushes comedy to the verge of dramatic effect ; he
hustles his characters amidst surprises and violence,
und aU but stultifies them in order to exaggerate his
satire. Observe in Olivia, a copy of Celim^ne, the fury
of the passions which he depicts. She describes her
Mends as does C<51im^ne, but with what insults ! Novel,
a coxcomb, says :

" Madam, I have been treated to-day with all the ceremony
and kindness imaginable at my lady Autumn's. But the nause-
ous old woman at the upper end of her table ' . . .

Olivia : " Revives the old Grecian custom, of serving in a
death's head with their banquets. ... I detest her hollow
cherry cheeks : she looks like an old coach new painted. . . .
She is still most splendidly, gallantly ugly, and looks like an
ill piece of daubing in a rich frame." ^

1 ITie Plain Dealer, ii. 1.

366 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

The scene is borrowed from Moli^re's Misanthrope
and the Critique de TEcole des Femmes ; but how trans-
formed ! Our modem nerves would not endure the
portrait Olivia draws of Manly, her lover ; he hears her
imawares ; she forthwith stands before him, laughs at
him to his face, declares herself to be married ; tells ^im
she means to keep the diamonds which he has given
her, and defies him. FideUa says to her :

" But, madam, what could make you dissemble love to hinff^
when 'twas so hard a thing for you ; and flatter his love to you t **

Olivia. " That which makes all the world flatter and dis-
semble, 'twas his money : I had a real passion for that. . . .
As soon as I had his money, I hastened his departure like a
wife, who when she has made the most of a dyiog husband's
breath, pulls away his pillow." ^

The last phrase is rather that of a morose satirist than of
an accurate observ^er. The woman's impudence is like
a professed courtesan's. In love at first sight with
Fidelia, whom she takes for a young man, she hangs
upon her neck, " stuffs her with kisses," gropes about in
the dark, crjdng, "Where are thy lips?" There is a
kind of animal ferocity in her lova She sends her
husband off by an improvised comedy ; then skipping
about like a dancing girl cries out : " Go, husband, and
come up, friend; just the buckets in the well; the
absence of one brings the other." " But I hope, like
them too, they will not meet in the way, jostle, and
clash together."^ Surprised in flagrante delicto, and
having confessed all to her cousin, as soon as she sees
a chance of safety, she swallows her avowal with the
effrontery of an actress : —

1 The Plain Dealer, iv. 2. • Ihid.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 367

'' Miza, Well, couBin, this, I confess, was reasonable hypo-
crisy ; you were the better for \
. Olivia, What hypocrisy ?

E, Why, this last deceit of your husband was lawful, since
in your own defence.

0, What deceit ? I'd have you know I never deceived my
husband.

E. You do not understand me, sure; I say, this was an
honest come-off, and a good one. But 'twas a sign your gallant
had had enough of your conversation, since he could so dexter-
ously cheat your husband in passing for a woman.

0. What d'ye mean, once more, with my gallant, and passing
for a woman 9

E, What do you mean 1 you see your husband took him for
a woman!

0. Whom?

E, Heyday ! why, the man he found with. . . .

0, Lord, you rave sure !

E. Why, did you not tell me last night. . . . Fy, this fooling
is so insipid, 'tis offensive.

0, And fooling with my honour will be more offensive. . . .

E. admirable confidence ! . . .

0. Confidence, to me ! to me such language ! nay, then Fll
never see your j&ce again. . . . Lettice, where are you ? Let us
begone firom this censorious ill woman. . . .

E, One word first, pray, madam ; can you swear that whom
your husband found you with . . .

0. Swear ! ay, that whosoever 'twas that stole up, unknown,
into my room, when 'twas dark, I know not, whether man or
woman, by heavens, by all that's good ; or, may I never
more have joys here, or in the other world! Nay, may I
eternally —

E, Be damned. So, so, you are damned enough ahready by
your oaths. . . . Yet take this advice with you, in this plain-
dealing age, to leave off forswearing yourself. ...

368 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m,

0. hideous, hideous advice ! let us go out of the hearing
of it. She will spoil us, Lettice." ^

Here is animation ; and if I dared to relate the boldness
and the asseveration in the night scene, it would easily
appear that Mme. Mame£fe^ had a sister, and Balzac
a predecessor.

There is a character who shows in a concise manner
Wycherle/s talent and his morality, wholly formed of
energy and indelicacy, — Manly, the " plain dealer," so
manifestly the author's favourite, that his contemporaries
gave him the name of his hero for a surname. Manly
is copied after Alceste, and the great difference between
the two heroes shows the difference between the two
societies and the two countries.^ Manly is not &
courtier, but a ship-captain, with the bearing of a sailor
of the time, his cloak stained with tar, and smelling of
brandy,* ready with blows or foul oaths, calling those he
came across dogs and slaves, and when they displeased
him, kicking them down stairs. And he speaks in this
fashion to a lord with a voice like a mastiff. Then,
when the poor nobleman tries to whisper something in
his ear, " My lord, all that you have made me know by
your whispering which I knew not before, is that you

^ The Plain Dealer y v. 1 ^ See note, vol. i. page 41.

' Compare with the sayings of Alceste, in Molifcre's Misanthrope^
such tirades as this : ** Such as you, like common whores and pick-
pockets, are only dangerous to those you embrace." And with the
character of Philinte, in the same French play, such phrases as these :
*' But, faith, could you think 1 was a friend to those I hugged, kissed,
flattered, howed to ? WTien their backs were turned, did not I tell you
they were rogues, villains, rascals, whom I despised and hated ? "

* Olivia says : " Then shall I have again my alcove smell like a
cabin, my chamber perfumed with his tarpaulin Brandenbuigh ; and
hear vollies of brandy -sighs, enough to make a fog in one's room." —
The Plain Dealer ^ iL 1.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 369

have a stinking breath ; there's a secret for your secret."
When he is in OUvia's drawing-room, with "these
fluttering parrots of the town, these apes, these echoes
of men," he bawls out as if he were on his quarter-deck,
" Peace, you Bartholomew fair buffoons !" He seizes
them by the collar, and says: "Why, you impudent,
pitiful wretches, . . . you are in all things so like
women, that you may think it in me a kind of cowardice
to beat you. Begone, I say. ... No chattering,
baboons; instantly begone, or" . . . Then he turns
them out of the roonL These are the manners of a
plain-dealing mart He has been ruined by Olivia,
whom he loves, and who dismisses him. Poor Fidelia,
disguised as a man, and whom he takes for a timid
youth, comes and finds him while he is fretting with
anger:

^* Fidelia. I warrant you, sir ; for, at worst, I could beg or
steal for you.

Manly. Nay, more bragging ! . . . You said you'd beg for
me.

F. I did, sir.

M. Then you shall beg for me.

F. With all my heart, sir.

M. That is, pimp for me.

F. How, air ?

M. D'ye start 1. . . No more dissembling: here (I say,)
you must go use it for me to Olivia. . . . Go, flatter, lie, kneel,
promise, anything to get her for me : I cannot live unless I
have her." ^

And when Fidelia returns to him, saying that Olivia
has embraced her, by force, in a fit of love, he ex-
claims; "Her love! — a whore's, a witch's love! —

1 The Plain Dealer, iii. 1.
VOL. n. 2 B

370 THE CLASSIC AGE. book ni.

But what, did she not kiss well, sir? Tm sure, I
thought her lips — but I must not think of 'em more
— but yet they are such I could still kiss, — grow to, —
and then tear off with my teeth, grind 'em into
mammocks, and spit 'em into her cuckold's face."^
These savage words indicate savage actions. He goes
by night to enter Olivia's house with Fidelia, and under
her name; and Fidelia tries to prevent him, through
jealousy. Then his blood boils, a storm of fury moimts
to his face, and he speaks to her in a whispering, hiss-
ing voice : " What, you are my rival, then ! and there-
fore you shall stay, and keep the door for me, whilst I
go in for you ; but when I'm gone, if you dare to stir
off from this very board, or breathe the least murmuring
accent, I'll cut her throat first ; and if you love her, you
will not venture her life. — Nay, then I'll cut your throat
too, and I know you love your own life at least. . . .
Not a word more, lest I begin my revenge on her by
killing you."^ He knocks over Olivia's husband, another
traitor seizes from her the casket of jewels he had
given her, casts her one or two of them, saying, " Here,
madam, I never yet left my wench impaid," and gives
this same casket to Fidelia, whom he marries. All
these actions then appeared natural. Wycherley took to
himself in his dedication the title of his hero. Plain
Dealer ; he fancied he had drawn the portrait of a frank,
honest man, and praised himself for having set the
public a fine example ; he had only given them the
model of an unreserved and energetic bruta That was
all the manliness that was left in this pitiable world.
Wycherley deprived man of his ill-fitting French cloak,

1 The Plain, Dealer, iv. 1. * Ibid, iv. 2.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 371

and displayed him with his framework of muscles, and
in his naked shamelessness.

And in the midst of all these, a great poet, bHnd, and
sunk into obscurity, his soul saddened by the misery of
the times, thus depicted the madness of the infernal rout :

" Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd
Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself . . . who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who fill'd
With lust and violence the house of God ?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury, and outrage : and w^hen night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." ^

2. The Worldlings.

I.

In the seventeenth century a new mode of life was
inaugurated in Europe, the worldly, which soon took
the lead of and shaped every other. In France especi-
ally, and in England, it appeared and gained ground,
from the same causes and at the same time.

In order to people the drawing-rooms, a certain
political condition is necessary; and this condition,
which is the supremacy of the king in combination with
a regular system of police, was established at the same
period on both sides of the Channel A regular police
brings about peace among men, draws them out of their

^ Paradise Lost, book L I. 490-502.

372 THE CLASSIC AGE. book ra.

feudal independence and provincial isolation, increases
and facilitates intercommunication, confidence, union,
comfort, and pleasures. The kingly supremacy calls
into existence a court, the centre of intercourse, from
wliich all favours flow, and which calls for a display of
pleasure and splendour. The aristocracy thus attracted
to one another, and attracted to the throne by security,
curiosity, amusement, and interest, meet together, and
become at once men of the world and men of the court
They are no longer, like the barons of a preceding age,
standing in their lofty halls, armed and stem, possessed
by the idea that they might perhaps, when they quit
their palace, cut each other to pieces, and that if they
fall to blows in the precincts of the court, the exe-
cutioner is ready to cut off their hand and stop
the bleeding with a red-hot iron; knowing, more-
over, that the king may probably have them beheaded
to-morrow, and ready accordingly to cast themselves on
their knees and break out into protestations of sub-
missive fidelity, but coimting imder their breath the
number of swords that wiU be mustered on their side,
and the trusty men who keep sentinel behind the
drawbridge of their castles.^ The rights, privileges,
constraints, and attractions of feudal life have dis-
appeared. There is no more need that the manor
should be a fortress. These men can no longer experi-
ence the joy of reigning there as in a petty state. It
has palled on them, and they quit it. Having no
further cause to quarrel with the king, they go to him.
His court is a drawing-room, most agreeable to the
sight, and most serviceable to those who frequent it
Here are festivities, splendid furniture, a decked and

^ Consult all Shakspeare's historical plays.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 373

select company, news and tittle-tattle; here they find
pensions, titles, places for themselves and their friends ;
they receive amusement and profit ; it is all gain and
all pleasure. Here they attend the lev^e, are present at
dinners, return to the ball, sit down to play, are there
when the king goes to bed. Here they cut a dash
with their half-French dress, their wigs, their hats
loaded with feathers, their trunk-hose, their cannions,
the large rosettes on their shoes. The ladies paint and
patch their faces, display robes of magnificent satin
and velvet, laced up with silver and very long, and
above you may see their white busts, whose brilliant
nakedness is extended to their shoulders and arms.
They are gazed upon, saluted, approached. The king
rides on horseback in Hyde Park ; by his side canter
the queen, and with her the two mistresses. Lady Castle-
maine and Mrs. Stewart : " the queen in a white-laced
waistcoate and a crimson short pettycoate, and her
hair dressed d la rUgligcnce ; . . Mrs. Stewart with her
hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little
Roman nose, and excellent taiUe." ^ Then they returned
to Whitehall " where all the ladies walked, talking and
fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and
trying one another's by one another's heads, and laugh-
ing." ^ In such fine company there was no lack of
gallantry. Perfumed gloves, pocket mirrors, work-cases
fitted up, apricot paste, essences, and other little love-
tokens, came over every week from Paris. London
furnished more substantial gifts, ear-rings, diamonds,
brilliants, and golden guineas; the fair ones put up
with these, as if they had come from a greater distance.^

1 Pepy^ Diary, ii. July 18, 1663. » Ibid,

' Mimoires de GrammorU, by A. Hamilton.

374 THE CLASSIC AGK book m.

There were plenty of intrigues — ^Heaven knows how
many or of what kind. Naturally, also, conversation
does not stop. They did not mince the adventures
of Miss Warmest!^ the haughty, who, " deceived ap-
parently by a bad reckoning, took the liberty of
lying-in in the midst of the court." ^ They spoke in
whispers about the attempts of Miss Hobart, or the
happy misfortune of Miss Churchill, who, being very-
plain, but having the wit to fall from her horse, touched
the eyes and heart of the Duke of York. The
Chevalier de Granunont relates to the king the history
of Termes, or of Poussatin the almoner : every one
leaves the dance to hear it ; and when it is over, they
all burst out laughing. We perceive that this is not
the world of Louis XIV., and yet it is a world ; and if
it has more froth, it runs with the identic^ current
The great object here also is selfish amusement, and to
put on appearances ; people strive to be men of fashion ;
a coat bestows a certain kind of glory on its wearer.
De Grammont was in despair when the roguery of his
valet obliged him to wear the same suit twice over.
Another courtier piques himself on his songs and his
guitar-playing. " Eussell had a collection of two or
three hundred quadrilles in tablature, all of which he
used to dance without ever having studied them."
Jermyn was kno\\Ti for his success with the fair. " A
gentleman," said Etherege, " o\ight to dress weU, dance
well, fence well, have a talent for love-letters, a pleasant
voice in a room, to be always very amorous, sufficiently
discreet, but not too constant." These are already the
court manners as they continued in France up to the
time of Louis XVI. With such manners, words take

^ Mimoircs dc Grammo^U, by A. Hamilton, ch. ix.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 375

the place of deeds. Life is passed in visits and con-
versation. The art of conversing became the chief of
all ; of course, to converse agreeably, to fill up an idle
hour, on twenty subjects in an hour, hinting always,
without going deep,* in such a fashion that conversation
should not be a labour, but a promenade. It was
followed up by letters written in the evening, by
madrigals or epigrams to be read in the morning, by
drawing-room tragedies, or caricatures of society. In
this manner a new literature was produced, the work
and the portrait of the world which was at once its
audience and its model, which sprung from it, and
ended in it

IT.

The art of conversation being then a necessity,
people set themselves to acquire it. A revolution was
effected in mind as weU as in manners. As soon as
circumstances assimie new aspects, thought assumes a
new form. The Renaissance is ended, the Classic Age
begins, and the artist makes room for the author. Man
is returned from his first voyage round the world of
facts; enthusiasm, the labour of a troubled imagina-
tion, the tumultuous crowding of new ideas, aU the
faculties which a first discovery calls into play, have
become satiated, then depressed. The incentive is
blunted, because the work is done. The eccentricities,
the far vistas, the unbridled originality, the all-p(}werful
flights of genius aimed at the centre of truth through
the extremes of folly, all the characteristics of grand
inventive genius have disappeared. The imagination
is tempered; the mind is disciplined: it retraces its
steps; it walks its own domain once more with a

376 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

satisfied curiosity, an acquired experience. Judgment,
as it were, chews the cud and corrects itself. It finds
a religion, an art, a philosophy, to reform or to form
anew. It is no longer the minister of inspired intuition,
but of a regular process of decomposition. It no longer
feels or looks for generalities ; it handles and observes
specialties. It selects and classifies ; it refines and
regulates. It ceases to be a creator, and becomes a
discourser. It quits the province of invention and settles
down into criticism. It enters upon that magnificent
and confused aggregate of dogmas and forms, in which
the preceding age has gathered up indiscriminately its
dreams and discoveries; it draws thence the ideas
which it modifies and verifies. It arranges them in
long chains of simple ratiocination, which descend link
by link to the vulgar apprehension. It expresses them
in exact terms, which present a graduated series, step by
step, to the vulgar reasoning power. It marks out in
the entire field of thought a series of compartments and
a network of passages, which, excluding all error and
digression, lead gradually every mind to every object
It becomes at last clear, convenient, charming. And
the world lends its aid ; contingent circimistances finish
the natural revolution; the taste becomes changed
through a declivity of its own, but also through the
influence of the court. When conversation becomes
the chief business of life, it modifies style after its own
image, and according to its peculiar needs. It repudi-
ates digression, excessive metaphor, impassioned ex-
clamations, all loose and overstrained ways. We can-
not bawl, gesticulate, dream aloud, in a drawing-room ;
we restrain ourselves; we criticise and keep watch
over ourselves ; we pass the time in narration and dis-

CHAP. I. THE RESTOEATION. 377

cussion ; we stand in need of concise expression, exact
language, clear and connected reasoning ; otherwise we
cannot fence or comprehend eeu^h other. Correct style,
good language, conversation, are self-generated, and
very quickly perfected ; for refinement is the aim of
the man of the world : he studies to rendel: everything
more becoming and more serviceable, his furniture and
his speech, his periods and his dress. Art and artifice
are there the distinguishing mark. People pride them-
selves on being perfect in their mother tongue, never
to miss the correct sense of any word, to avoid vulgar
expressions, to string together their antitheses, to de-
velop their thoughts, to employ rhetoric. Nothing is
more marked than the contrast of the conversations of
Shakspeare and Fletcher with those of Wycherley and
Congreve. In Shakspeare the dialogue resembles an
assault of arms ; we could imagine men of skill fencing
with words and gestures as it were in a fencing-school.
They play the buffoon, sing, think aloud, burst out into
a laugh, into pims, into fishwomen's talk and into poet's
talk, into quaint whimsicalities ; they have a taste for
the ridiculous, the sparkling ; one of them dances while
he speaks ; they would willingly walk on their hands ;
there is not one grain of calculation to more than three
grains of foUy in their heads. In Wycherley, on the
other hand, the characters are steady ; they reason and
dispute ; ratiocination is the basis of their style ; they
are so perfect that the thing is overdone, and we see
through it all the author stringing his phrases. They
arrange a tableau, multiply ingenious comparisons,
balance well-ordered periods. One character delivers
a satire, another serves up a little essay on morality.
We might draw from the comedies of the time a

378 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

volume of sentences; they are charged with literary
morsels which foreshadow the Spectator} They hunt
for clever and suitable expressions, they clothe in-
decent circumstances with decent words; they glide
swiftly over the fragile ice of decorum, and scratch the
surface without breaking it I see gentlemen, seated in
gilt arm-chairs, of quiet wit and studied speech, cool in
observation, eloquent sceptics, expert in the fashions,
lovers of elegance, liking fine talk as much horn
vanity as from taste, who, while conversing between a
compliment and a reverence, will no more neglect their
good style than their neat gloves or their hat

III.

Amongst the best and most agreeable specimens of
this new refinement, appears Sir William Temple, a
diplomatist and man of the world, cautious, prudent, and
polite, gifted with tact in conversation and in business,
expert in the knowledge of the times, and in the art of
not compromising himself, adroit in pressing forward
and in standing aside, who knew how to attract to
himself the favour and the expectations of England, to
obtain the eulogies of men of letters, of savants, of
politicians, of the people, to gain a European reputation,
to win all the crowns appropriated to science, patriot-
ism, virtue, genius, without having too much of science,
patriotism, genius, or \irtue. Such a life is the master-
piece of that age : fine externals on a foimdation not
so fine ; this is its abstract His manner as an author
agrees with his maxims as a politician. His principles
and style are homogeneous ; a genuine diplomatist, such

^ Take, for example, Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem^ iL 1.

CHAP. I. THE RESTOEATION. 379

as one meets in the drawing-rooms, having probed
Europe and touched everywhere the bottom of things ;
tired of everything, specially of enthusiasm, admirable
in an arm-chair or at a levee, a good story-teller,
waggish if need were, but in moderation, accomplished
in the art of maintaining the dignity of his station and
of enjoying himself. In his retreat at Sheen, after-
wards at Moor Park, he employs his leisure in writing ;
and he writes as a man of his rank would speak, very
well, that is to say, with dignity and facility, particu-
larly when he writes of the countries he has visited, of
the incidents he has seen, the noble amusements which
serve to pass his time.^ He has an income of fifteen
hundred a year, and a nice sinecure in Ireland. He
retired from public life during momentous struggles,
siding neither with the king nor against him, resolved,
as he teUs us himself, not to set himself against the
current when the current is irresistible. He Uves
peacefully in the country with his wife, his sister,
his secretary, his dependants, receiving the visits of
strangers, who are anxious to see the negotiator of
the Triple Alliance, and sometimes of the new King
William, who unable to obtain his services, comes
occasionally to seek his counsel He plants and
gardens, in a fertile soil, in a country the climate of
which agrees with him, amongst regular flower-beds, by
the side of a very straight canal, bordered by a straight
terrace ; and he lauds himself in set terms, and with
suitable discreetness, for the character he possesses
and the part he has chosen : — " I have often wondered
how such sharp and violent invectives come to be made

^ Consult especially, Observations upon the United Fromnces of the
Netherlands; Of Gardening.

380 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

so generally against Epicurus, by the ages that followed
him, whose admirable wit, felicity of expression,
excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, temper-
ance of life and constancy of death, made him so
beloved by his friends, admired by his scholars, and
honoured by the Athenians."^ He does well to defend
Epicurus, because he has followed his precepts, avoiding
every great confusion of the mind, and installing him-
self, like one of Lucretius* gods, in the interspace of
worlds ; as he says : " Wliere factions were once
entered and rooted in a state, they thought it madness
for good men to meddle with public affairs." And
again : " The true ser\dce of the public is a business of
so much labour and so much care, that though a good
and wise man may not refuse it, if he be called to it
by his prince or his country, and thinks he may be of
more than vulgar use, yet he will seldom or never seek
it ; but leaves it commonly to men who, imder the dis-
guise of public good, pursue their own designs of
wealth, power, and such bastard honours as usuaUy
attend them, not that which is the true, and only true,
reward of virtue."^ Tliis is how he ushers himself in.
Thus presented to us, he goes on to talk of the garden-
ing which he practises, and first of the six grand
Epicureans who have illustrated the doctrine of their
master — Caesar, Atticus, Lucretius, Horace, Maecenas,
Virgil ; then of the various sorts of gardens which have
a name in the world, from the garden of Eden, and
the garden of Alcinous, to those of Holland and Italy ;
and all this at some length, like a man who listens to
liimself and is listened to by others, who does rather
profusely the honours of his house and of his wit to

1 Temple's Works : Of Gardening, iL 190. ' IbicL 184.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 381

his guests, but does them with grace and dignity, not
dogmatically nor haughtily, but in varied tones, aptly
modulating his voice and gestures. He recoimts the
four kinds of grapes which he has introduced into
England, and confesses that he has been extmvagant,
yet does not regret it ; for five years he has not once
wished to see London. He intersperses technical
advice with anecdotes ; whereof one relates to Charles
II., who praised the English climate above all others,
saying : " He thought that was the best climate, where
he could be abroad in the air with pleasure, or at least
without trouble or inconvenience, most days of the
year, and most hours of the day." Another about
the Bishop of Munster, who, unable to grow any-
thing but cherries in his orchard, had collected all
varieties, and so perfected the trees that he had fruit
fix)m May to September. The reader feels an inward
gratification when he hears an eyewitness relate minute
details of such great men. Our .attention is aroused
immediately; we in consequence imagine ourselves
denizens of the court, and smile complacently; no
matter if the details be slender; they serve passably
well, they constitute " a half hour with the aristocracy,"
like a lordly way of taking snufiT, or shaking the lace
of one's ruffles. Such is the interest of courtly con-
versation ; it can be held about nothing ; the excellence
of the manner lends this nothing a peculiar charm;
you hear the sound of the voice, you are amused by the
half smile, abandon yourself to the fluent stream, forget
that these are ordinary ideas; you observe the
narrator, his peculiar breeches, the cane he toys with,
the be-ribboned shoes, his easy walk over the smooth
gravel of his garden paths between the faultless hedges ;

382 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

the ear, the mind even is charmed, captivated by the
appropriateness of his diction, by the abundance of his
ornate periods, by the dignity and fuhiess of a style
which is involimtarily regular, which, at first artificial,
like good breeding, ends, like true good breeding, by
being changed into a real necessity and a natural talent
Unfortimately, this talent occasionally leads to
blimders ; when a man speaks weU about everything, he
thinks he has a right to speak of everything. He plays
the philosopher, the critic, even the man of learning;
and indeed becomes so actually, at least with the ladies.
Such a man writes, like Temple, Essays on the Nature
of Government, on Heroic Virtue} on Poetry] that is,
little treatises on society, on the beautiful, on the philo-
sophy of history. He is the Locke, the Herder, the
Bentley of the drawing-room, and nothing else. Now
and then, doubtless, his mother wit leads him to fair
original judgments. Temple was the first to discover
a Pindaric glow in the old chant of Eagnar Lodbrog,
and to place Don Quixote in the first rank of modem
fictions ; moreover, when he handles a subject within
his range, like the causes of the poWer and decline of
the Turks, his reasoning is admirable. But otherwise,
he is simply a tyro ; nay, in him the pedant crops out,
and the worst of pedants, who, being ignorant, wishes to
seem wise, who quotes the history of every land,
hauling in Jupiter, Saturn, Osiris, Fo-hi, Confucius,
Manco-Capac, Mahomet, and discourses on all these
obscure and unknown civilisations, as if he had labori-
ously studied them, at the foimtain head and not at

^ Compare this essay with that of Carlyle, on Heroes and Hero-
Warship ; tlie title and subject are similar ; it is curious to note the
difference of the two centuries.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 383

second hand, through the extracts of his secretary, or
the books of others. One day he came to grief ; having
plunged into a Kterary dispute, and claimed superiority
for the ancients over the moderns, he imagined himself
a Hellenist, an antiquarian, related the voyages of Pytha-
goras, the education of Orpheus, and remarked that the
Greek sages " were commonly excellent poets, and great
physicians : they were so learned in natural philosophy,
that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but
earthquakes at land and storms at sea, great droughts and
great plagues, much plenty or much scarcity of certain
sorts of fruits or grain; not to mention the magical
powers attributed to several of them, to aUay storms, to
raise gales, to appease commotions of people, to make
plagues cease." ^ Admirable faculties, which we no
longer possess. Again he regretted the decay of music,
" by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls, and serpents,
were so frequently enchapted, and their very natures
changed ; by which the passions of men were raised to
the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly
appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned
into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the
powers and charms of this admirable art." ^ He wished
to enumerate the greatest modem writers, and forgot to
mention in his catalogue, " amongst the Italians, Dante,
Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; in his list of French,
Pascal, Bossuet, Moli^re, Comeille, Eacine, and Boileau ;
in his list of Spaniards, Lope and Calderon ; and in his
list of English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Milton ; " ^ though, by way of compensation, he inserted

^ Temple's Works, ii. : An Essay upon the Ancient and Modem
Learning, 155. ' Ibid. 166.

' Macaulay's Works, vi. 819 : Essay on Sir William Temple,

38i THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

the names of Paolo Sarpi, Guevara, Sir Philip Sidney,
Selden, Voiture, and Buasy-Kabutin, " author of the His-
toire avwureuse dea Gaulcs." To cap all, he declared the
fables of JEaop, which are a dull Byzautiae compilation,
and the letters of Phalaria, a wretched sophistical forgery,
to be admirable and authentic : — " It may perhaps be
further afiirmed, in favour of the ancients, that the oldest
books we have are stiU in their kind the best The two
most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we call
profane authors, are .^op's Fab/ea and Phalaris' Epistles,
both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus
and Pythagoras. As the first has been ^reed by all
ages since for the greatest master in his kind, and all
others of that sort have been but imitations of his ori-
ginal; so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more
grace, more spirit, mora force of wit and genius, tliaa
any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern."
And then, in order to commit himself beyond remedy,
he gravely remarked : " I know several learned men (or
that usually pass for such, under the name of critics)
have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian with
some others have attrilmted them to Lucian ; but I
think he must Lave little skill In painting that cannot
find out this to be an original : such diversity of passions,
upon such variety of actions and passages of life and
government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of
expression, such Iwunty to his friends, such scorn of
his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem
of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death,
with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge,
could never be represented but by him that possessed
them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more
capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 385

In all one writ, you find the scholar or the sophist ; and
in all the other, the tyrant and the commander." ^

Fine rhetoric truly ; it is sad that a passage so aptly
turned should cover so many stupidities. All this
appeared very triumphant ; and the universal applause
with which this fine oratorical bombast was greeted de-
monstrates the taste and the culture, the hoUowness and
the politeness, of the elegant world of which Temple was
the marvel, and which, like Temple, loved only the
varnish of truth.

IV.

Such were the ornate and polished manners which
gradually pierce through debauchery and assimie the as-
cendant. Gradually the current grows clearer, and
marks out its course, like a stream, which forcibly
entering a new bed, moves with difficulty at first through
a heap of mud, then pushes forward its stiU murky
waters, which are purified little by little. These de-
bauchees try to be men of the world, and sometimes
succeed in it. Wycherley writes well, very clearly,
without the least trace of euphuism, almost in the
French manner. He makes Dapperwit say of Lucy, in
maasured phrase, " She is beautiful without afifectation,
amorous without impertinence, . . . frolic without rude-
ness."^ When he wishes it he is ingenious, and his
gentlemen exchange happy comparisons. " Mistresses,"
says one, " are like books : if you pore upon them too
much, they doze you, and make you unfit for company ;
but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation
by 'euL" " Yes," says another, " a mistress should be

^ An Essay upon the Ancient and Modem Learning, 173.

' Love in a Wood, iiL 2.
VOL. n. 2 C

386 THE CLASSIC AGE. book ra.

like a little country retreat near the town ; not to dwell
in constantly, but only for a night and away, to taste the
town the better when a man returns." ^ These folk have
style, even out of place, often not in accordance with the
situation or condition of the persons. A shoemaker in
one of Etherege*8 plays says : " There is never a man in
the town lives more like a gentleman with his wife than
I do. I never mind her motions ; she never inquires
into mine. We speak to one another civilly, hate one
another heartily." There is perfect art in this little
speech ; everything is complete, even to the symmetrical
antithesis of words, ideas, sounds : what a fine talker
is this same satirical shoemaker ! After a satire, a
madrigal. In one place a certain character exclaims,
in the very middle of a dialogue, and .in sober prose,
" Pretty pouting lips, with a little moisture hanging on
them, that look like the Provence rose fresh on the bush,
ere the morning sim has quite drawn up the dew."
Is not this the graceful gallantry of the court?
Rochester himself sometimes might furnish a parallel
Two or three of his songs are still to be found in the
expui-gated books of extracts in use amongst modest
young girls. It matters nothing that such men are
really scamps ; they must be every moment using com-
pliments and salutations: before women whom they
wish to seduce they are compelled to warble tender
words and insipidities : they acknowledge but one check,
the necessity to appear well-bred ; yet this check suffices
to restrain them. Kochester is correct even in the
midst of his filth ; if he talks lewdly, it is in the able
and exact manner of Boileau. All these roisterers aim
at being wits and men of the world. Sir Charles Sedley

1 The Country Wife, I 1.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 387

ruins and pollutes himself, but Charles II. calls him
" the viceroy of Apollo." Buckingham extols " the
magic of his style." He is the most charming, the
most sought-after of talkers ; he makes puns and verses,
always agreeable, sometimes refined ; he handles dex-
terously the pretty jargon of m)rthology ; he insinuates
into his airy, flowing verses all the dainty and some-
what affected prettinesses of the drawing-room. He
sings thus to Chloris :

" My passion with your beauty grew,
While Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favour'd you,
Threw a new flaming dart."

And then sums up :

" Each gloried in their wanton part :
To make a lover, he
Employed the utmost of his art ;
To make a beauty, she." ^

There is no love whatever in these pretty things;
they are received as they are presented, with a smile ;
they form part of the conventional language, the polite
attentions due from gentlemen to ladies. I suppose
they would send them in the morning with a nosegay,
or a box of preserved fruits. Roscommon indites some
verses on a dead lapdog, on a young lady's cold ; this
naughty cold prevents her singing — cursed be the
winter! And hereupon he takes the winter to task,
abuses it at length. Here you have the literary amuse-
ments of the worldling. They first treat love, then

^ Sir Charles Sedley's Works, ed. Briscoe, 1778, 2 vols. : The Mul-
berry OartUn, il

388 THE CLASSIC A6K book m.

danger, most airily and gailj. On the eye of a naval
contest, Dorset, at sea, amidst the pitching of his vessel,
addresses a celebrated song to the ladies. There is
nothing weighty in it, either sentiment or wit ; people
hum the couplets as they pass ; they emit a gleam of
gaiety ; the next moment they are forgotten. Dorset
at sea writes to the ladies, on the night before an
engagement :

" Let's hear of no iDconstancj,
We hare too much of that at sea."

And again:

*^ Should foggy Opdam chance to know

Our sad and dismal stoiy,
The Dutch would scorn so weak a foe,

And quit their fort at Croree.
For what resistance can they find
From men whoVe left their hearts behind ? **

Then come jests too much in the English style :

" Then if we write not by each post,
Think not we are unkind ; . . .
Our tears we'll send a speedier way ;
The tide shall bring them twice a day."

Such tears can hardly flow from sorrow; the lady
regards them as the lover sheds them, good-naturedly.
She is " at a play " (he thinks so, and tells her so) :

" Whilst you, regardless of our woe,
Sit careless at a play,
Perhaps permit some happier man
To kiss your hand, or flirt your fiuL* ^

^ FForks of the Earls o/EoehetUr, JBotoommon, amd Domi^ 2 Tok.,
1781, iL 54.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 389

Dorset hardly troubles himself about it, plays with
poetry without excess or assiduity, just as it flows,
writing to-day a verse against Dorinda, to-morrow a
satire against Mr. Howard, always easUy and without
study, like a true gentleman. He is an earl, lord-chamber-
lain, and rich ; he pensions and patronises poets as he
would flirts — to amuse himself, without binding himself.
The Duke of Buckingham does the same, and also the
contrary; caresses one poet, parodies another; is flat-
tered, mocked, and ends by having his portrait taken
by Dryden — a chtf d!(xuvre, but not flattering. We
have seen such pastimes and such bickerings in France ;
we find here the same manners and the same literature,
because we find here also the same society and the
same spirit

Among these poets, and in the front rank, is Edmund
Waller, who lived and wrote in this manner to his
eighty-second year : a man of wit and fashion, well-
bred, familiar from his youth with great people, endued
with tact and foresight, quick at repartee, not easy to put
out of countenance, but selfish, with hardly any feelings,
having changed sides more than once, and bearing very
wdl L M.U of hi, >^.»^^ ; i. Short, f goS
model of the worldling and the courtier. It was he
who, having once praised Cromwell, and afterwards
Charles II., but the latter more feebly than the former,
said by way of excuse : " Poets, your Majesty, succeed
better in fiction than in truth." In this kind of exist-
ence, three-quarters of the poetry is written for the
occasion; it is the small change of conversation or
flattery; it resembles the little events or the little
sentiments from which it sprang. One piece is written
" Of Tea," another on the queen's portrait ; it is necessary

Sft Z3S T.^ri^^iT HrH:

^tv^ i*iL aiTu'inr ic xm^^:^ jii- jjnctinftt ami zTXinit ;

fomnr-t -^un^^L i 3iL=& 3*i^Hir J^ ^msML n: lis 3*»rag

-L irritr iimirr in :ii«ar'* aft "^rSEsts "U ^att C-imxCKS rf
.;uTihit? tu iRT naming: rjniaiitaiL'rsr ^ iLj Liiri of

y iniiiinii»-T";intL ol "int fnirn it ii» vzh^ a rwcr

la "Lilt "Tziit . mii jiif ^iitfcrr 2f mlr & ^niien. conT^rs*-
7^.11. — I uttsm 'liiH iturnscaojiL "^ni&m. ^:«s» -;3i as & faill,
▼iiaL ;:#t*.i:iti «c«!3L£ iir zh^t skc :c gCfftLV^'j;, Efting a
iiiik -.if :nf» * tt-ji, nc Tsr-.aczBr x!:t7iz2 4 i>:-Te GaIUdot
fu .uif •in ifijef 7uk!if ii£K. it« ij im^z 5* i.\ and ir^e may

ftftLrr. WtZctr fudiii on fiizrvtjtie Skruiiaisa had a fine
fitrwrr . or an ksi^ f->r uh^ stice <£ ^ood mannas:
ihii 'whi'-.L Li zn>:t§c eTi^i^eciu hi his hcikdtf poems is, that
lif: i^zL* ax a i/jirin:^ scxLe azisi c^i^xi riivmesw He is
:ktf*:fXf:(i, he eia;2g»rra:es, he strains after wit, he is*
aliraysj an autLor. X-jt venturing to address Saeharissa
hnr^U, he arl'iresses Mrsw Braoghton, her attendant,
" h« felJow-5er\'ant : "

*' 8^;, in those nations which the Son adore.
Some modest Persian, or some ireak-ered Moor,
No higher dares advance his dazzled sight
Than to some gilded cloud, which near the light
Of their ascending god adorns the east,
And, graced with his beam, outshines the rest." ^

* The English Poeti, ed. A. duOmers, 21 Tola., 1810 ; Waller,
vol Till 44.

r\

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 391

A fine comparison ! That is a well-made courtesy ; I
hope Sacharissa responds with one equally correct. His
despairs bear the same flavour ; he pierces the groves of
Penshurst with his cries, "reports his flame to the
beeches," and the weU-bred beeches " bow their heads,
as if they felt the same."^ It is probable that, in these
mournful walks, his greatest care was lest he should
wet the soles of his high-heeled shoes. These transports
of love bring in the classical machinery, Apollo and the
Muses. Apollo is annoyed that one of his servants is
ill-treated, and bids him depart ; and he departs, telling
Sacharissa that she is harder than an oak, and that she
was certainly produced from a rock.^

There is one genuine reality in all this — sensuality ;
not ardent, but light and gay. There is a certain piece,
" The Fall," which an abb^ of the court of Louis XV.
might have written :

" Then blush not, Fair ! or on him frown, . . .
How could the youth, alas ! but bend
When his whole HeaVn upon him lean'd ;

1 Tht English Poets, WaUer, vui. 44.

' ** While in this park I sing, the list'ning deer
Attend my passion, and forget to fear ;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
To gods appealing, when I reach their bow'rs
With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is giv'n,
More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heay*n !

. . . The rock.
That cloven rock, produc'd thee. . . .
This last complaint th' indulgent ears did pierce •

Of just Apollo, president of verse ;
Highly concerned that the Miise should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing." — Und, p. 44-5.

392 THE CLASSIC AGE. book iu.

If aught by hhn amiss were done,
'Twas that he let you rise so soon.'' ^

Other pieces smack of their surroundings, and are not
so polished :

*' Amoret ! as sweet as good,
As the most delicious food,
Which but tasted does impart
Life and gladness to the heart." ^

I should not be pleased, were I a woman, to be compared
to a beef-steak, though that be appetising ; nor should
I like any more to find myself, like Sachanssa, placed
on a level with good wine, which flies to the head :

** Sacharissa's beauty's wine,
Which to madness doth incline ;
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal can sustain." ^

This is too much honour for port wine and meat The
English back-ground crops up here and elsewhere ; for
example, the beautiful Sacharissa, having ceased to be
beautiful, asked Waller if he would again write verses
for her: he answered, "Yes, madame, when you are
once more as young and as handsome as you were,"
Here is something to shock a Frenchman. Neverthe-
less Waller is usually amiable ; a sort of brilliant light
floats like a halo roimd his verses ; he is always el^ant,
often graceful. His gracefulness is like the perfume
exhaled from the world; fresh toilettes, ornamented
drawing-rooms, the abundance and the pursuit of all
those refined and delicate comforts give to the mind a
sort of sweetness which is breathed forth in obliging

1 English Poets, Waller, viil 82. « Ibid, 45. » Ibid, 45.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 393

compliments and smiles. Waller has many of these
compliments and smiles, and those most flattering, apro^
pos of a bud, a girdle, a rose. Such bouquets become
his hands and his art He pays an excellent compli-
ment " To young Lady Lucy Sidney " on her age. And
what could be more attractive for a frequenter of draw-
ing-rooms, than this bud of still unopened youth, but
which blushes already, and is on the point of expanding ?

" Yet, fairest blossom ! do not slight
That age which you may know so soon.
The rosy mom resigns her light
And milder glory to the noon." ^

All his verses flow with a continuous harmony, clearness,
facility, though his voice is never raised, or out of tune,
or rough, nor loses its true accent, except by the world-
ling's affectation, which regularly changes all tones in
order to soften them. His poetry resembles one of those
pretty, affected, bedizened women, busy in inclining their
head on one side, and murmuring with a soft voice
commonplace things which they can hardly be said to
think, yet agreeable in their be-ribboned dress, and who
would please altogether if they did not dream of always
pleasing.

It is not that these men cannot handle grave
subjects ; but they handle them in their own fashion,
without gravity or depth. What the courtier most
lacks is the genuine sentiment of a true and original
idea. That which interests him most is the correct-
ness of the adornment, and the perfection of external
form. They care little for the matter itself, much for the
outward shape. In fact, it is form which they take for

» English Poets, WaUer, viiL 45.

394 THE CLASSIC AGK book ul

their subject in nearly all their serious poetry ; they
are critics, they lay down precepts, they compose Arts of
Poetry. Denham in his " Preface, to the Destrttctian of
Tror/" lays down rules for translating, whilst Eoscom-
mon teaches in a complete poem, an Ussay on translated
Verse, the art of translating poetry welL The Duke
of Buckinghamshire versified an JSssay on Poetry and an
£ssay on Satire. Dryden is in the first rank of these
pedagogues. Like Dryden again, they turn translators,
amplifiers. Eoscommon translated the Ars Poetica of
Horace ; Waller the first act of Pompie, a tragedy by
Comeille; Denham some fragments of Homer and Virgil,
and two poems, one of Prudence and another of Justice.
Bochester composed a satire against Mankind, in the
style of Boileau, and also an epistle upon Nothing ; the
amorous Waller wrote a didactic poem on The Fear of
God, and another in six cantos on Divine Lave. These
are exercises of style. They take a theological thesis,
a commonplace subject of philosophy, a poetic maxim,
and develop it in jointed prose, furnished with rhymes ;
invent nothing, feel little, and only aim at expressing
good arguments in classical metaphors, in noble terms,
after a conventional model. Most of their verses con-
sist of two nouns, furnished with epithets, and connected
by a verb, like college Latin verses. The epithet is
good : they had to hunt through the Gradus for it, or, as
Boileau wills it, they had to carry the line unfinished
in their heads, and had to think about it an hour in the
open air, until at last, at the comer of a wood, they
found the right word which they could not hit upon
before. I yawn, but applaud. After so much trouble
a generation ends by forming the sustained style which
is necessary to support, make public, and demonstrate

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 395

grand things. MeanwhUe, with their omate, official
diction, and their borrowed thought they are like formal
chamberlains, in embroidered coats present at a royal
marriage or an imperial baptism, empty of head, grave
in manner, admirable for dignity and bearing, with the
punctilio and the ideas of a dummy.

V.

One of them only (Dryden always excepted) showed
talent. Sir John Denham, Charles the First's secretary.
He was employed in public affairs, and after a dissolute
youth, turned to serious habits; and leaving behind
him satiric verse and party broad -jokes, attained in
riper years a lofty oratorical style. His best poem,
Coopei^s Hill, is the description of a hill and its sur-
roundings, blended with the historical ideas which the
sight recalls, and the moral reflections which its
appearance naturally suggests. All these subjects are
in accordance with the nobility and the limitation of
the classical spirit, and display his vigour without be-
traying his weaknesses; the poet could show off his whole
talent without forcing it. His fine language exhibits
aU its beauty, because it is sincere. We find pleasure
in following the regular progress of those copious
phrases in which his ideas, opposed or combined, attain
for the first time their definite place and full clear-
ness, where symmetry only brings out the argument
more clearly, expansion only completes thought, anti-
thesis and repetition do not induce trifling and affecta-
tion, where the music of verse, adding the breadth of
sound to the fulness of sense, conducts the chain of
ideas, without effort or disorder, by an appropriate
measure to a becoming order and movement. Gratifi-

396 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

cation is united with solidity ; the author of " Cooper's
Hill," knows how to please as well as to impress. His
poem is like a king's park, dignified and level with-
out doubt, but arranged to please the eye, and foil
of choice prospects. It leads us by easy digressions
across a multitude of varied thoughts. It shows us
here a mountain, yonder a memorial of the nymphs, a
classic memorial, like a portico filled with statues, further
on a broad stream, and by its side the ruins of an
abbey ; each page of the poem is like a distinct alley,
with its distinct perspective. Further on, our thoughts
are turned to the superstitions of the ignorant middle-
ages, and to the excesses of the recent revolution ; then
comes the picture of a royal himt ; we see the trem-
bling stag make his retreat to some dark covert :

^* He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His winged heels, and then his armed head ;
With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet ;
But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet.
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry." ^

These are the worthy spectacles and the studied
diversity of the groimds of a nobleman. Every object,
moreover, receives here, as in a king's palace, all the
adornment which can be given to it ; el^ant epithets
are introduced to embellish a feeble substantive ; the
decorations of art transform the commonplace of nature :
vessels are " floating towers ; " the Thames is " the most
loved of all the Ocean's sons ; " the airy moimtain hides
its proud head among the clouds, whilst a shady mantle
clothes its sides. Among different kinds of ideas, there

1 English PoeU, vii. 237.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 397

is one kingly, full of stately and magnificent ceremonies
of self-contained and studied gestures, of correct yet
commanding figures, uniform and imposing like the
appointments of a palace; hence the classic writers,
and Denham amongst them, draw all their poetic tints.
From this every object and event takes its colouring,
because constrained to come into contact with it Here
the object and events are compelled to traverse other
things. Denham is not a mere courtier, he is an
Englishman; that is, preoccupied by moral emotions.^
He often quits his landscape to enter into some
grave reflection; politics, religion, disturb the enjoy-
ment of his eyes ; in reference to a hill or a forest,
he meditates upon man; externals lead him inward;
impressions of the senses to contemplations of the souL
The men of this race are by nature and custom esoteric.
When he sees the Thames throw itself iuto the sea, he
compares it with " mortal life hasting to meet eternity."
The " lofty forehead " of a moimtain, beaten by storms,
reminds him of " the common fate of all that's high or
great" The course of the river suggests to him ideas
of inner reformation :

" could I flow like thee ! and make thy stream
My great example, aa it is my theme !
Though deep, yet clear, though gentle yet not dull ;
Strong without rage, without overflowing, fulL

But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes ; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows ;
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,
The common fate of all that's high or great." ^

^ English Poets, viL 236-7.

398 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

There is in the English mind an indestructible store of
moral instincts, and grand melancholy; and it is the
greatest confirmation of this, that we can discover such
a stock at the court of Charles II.

These are, however, but rare openings, and as it
were croppings up of the original rock. The habits of the
worldling are as a thick layer which cover it throughout.
Manners, conversation, style, the stage, taste, aU is
French, or tries to be ; they imitate France as well as
they are able, and go there to mould themselves.
Many cavaliers went there, driven away by CromweU.
Denham, WaUer, Eoscommon, and Eochester resided
there ; the Duchess of Newcastle, a poetess of the time,
was married at Paris ; the Duke of Buckinghamshire
served for a short time under Turenne ; Wycherley was
sent to France by his father, who wished to rescue him
from the contagion of Puritan opinions ; Vanbrugh, one
of the best comic playwrights, went thither to contract
a polish. The two courts were allied almost always in
fact, and always at heart, by a community of interests,
and of religious and monarchical ideas. Charles II.
accepted from Louis XIV. a pension, a mistress, counsels,
and examples ; the nobility followed their prince, and
France was the model of the English court. Her
literature and manners, the finest of the classic age, led
the fashion. We perceive in English writings that
French authors are their masters, and that they were
in the hands of all well-educated people. They con-
sulted Bossuet, translated Comeille, imitated Molifere,
respected Boileau. It went so far, that the greatest
gallants of them tried to be altogether French, to mix
some scraps of French in every phrase. " It is as ill-
breeding now to speak good English," says Wycherley,

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 399

" as to write good English, good sense, or a good hand."
These Frencliified coxcombs ^ are compliment-mongers,
always powdered, perfumed, "eminent for being hien
ganUsr They affect delicacy, they are fastidious ; they
find Englishmen coarse, gloomy, stiff; they try to be
giddy and thoughtless ; they giggle and prate at random,
placing the reputation of man in the perfection of his
wig and his bows. The theatre, which ridicules these
imitators, is an imitator after their fashion. French
comedy, like French politeness, becomes their model.
They copy both, altering without equalling them ; for
monarchical and classic France is amongst all nations,
the best fitted from its instincts and institutions for the
modes of worldly life, and the works of an oratorical
mind. England follows it in this course, being carried
away by the universal current of the age, but at a
distance, and drawn aside by its national peculiarities.
It is this common direction and this particular deviation
which the society and its poetry have proclaimed, and
which the stage and its characters will display.

VI.

Four principal writers established this comedy — Wy-
cherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar : ^ the first gross,
and in the pristine irruption of vice ; the others more
sedate, possessing niore a taste for urbanity than debauch-
ery ; yet all men of the world, and priding themselves
on their good breeding, on passing their days at court
or in fine company, on having the tastes and bearing of
gentlemen. " I am not a literary man," said Congreve

^ Etherege's Sir Fopling Flutter; Wycherley's The Gentleman
Dandng-masterf i. 2.
• From 1672 to 1726.

400 THE CLASSIC AGK book ra.

to Voltaire, "I am a gentleman." In fact, as Pope
said, he lived more like a man of quality than a man
of letters, was noted for his successes with the fair, and
passed his latter years in the house of the Duchess of
Marlborough. I have said that Wycherley, under
Charles II., was one of the most fashionable courtiers.
He served in the army for some time, as did also
Vanbrugh and Farquhar ; nothing is more gallant than
the name of Captain which they employed, the military
stories they brought back, and the feather they stuck
in their hats. They all wrote comedies on the same
worldly and classical model, made up of probable
incidents such as we observe around us every day, of
well-bred characters such as we commonly meet in a
drawing-room, correct and elegant conversations such
as well-bred men can carry on. Tliis theatre, wanting
in poetry, fancy, and adventures, imitative and discursive,
was formed at the same time as that of Moli^re, by the
same causes, and on his model, so that in order to
comprehend it we must compare it with that of Moliire.
" Molifere belongs to no nation," said a great English
actor (Kemble) ; " one day the god of comedy, wishing
to write, became a man, and happened to fall into
France." I accept this saying ; but in becoming man
he found himself, at the same time, a man of the
seventeenth century and a Frenchman, and that is how
he was the god of comedy. "To amuse respectable
people," said Molifere, "what a strange task!" Only
the French art of the seventeenth century could suc-
ceed in that ; for it consists in leading by an agreeable
path to general notions; and the taste for these
notions, as well as the custom of treading this path, is
the peculiar mark of respectable people. Moli^re, like

c?HAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 401

Racine, expands and creates. Open any one of his plays
that comes to hand, and the first scene in it, chosen at
random; after three replies you are carried away, or
rather led away. The second continues the first, the
third carries out the second, the fourth completes all ;
a current is created which bears us on, which bears us
away, which does not release us until it is exhausted.
There is no check, no digression, no episodes to distract
our attention. To prevent the lapses of an absent
mind, a secondary character intervenes, a lackey, a
lad/s-maid, a wife, who, couplet by couplet, repeat in
a different fashion the reply of the principal character,
and by means of symmetry and contrast keep us in the
path laid down. Arrived at the end, a second current
seizes us and acts like the first It is composed like
the other, and with reference to the other. It throws it
out by contrast, or strengthens it by resemblance.
Here the valets repeat the dispute, then the recon-
ciliation of their masters. In one place, Alceste,
drawn in one direction through three pages by anger,
is drawn in a contrary direction, and through three pages,
by love. Further on, tradesmen, professors, relatives,
domestics, relieve each other scene after scene, in order
to bring out in clearer light the pretentiousness and gul-
libility of M. Jourdain. Every scene, every act, brings
out in greater relief, completes, or prepares another.
Everything is united, and everything is simple ; the
action progresses, and progresses only to carry on the
idea ; there is no complication, no incidents. One comic
event suffices for the story. A dozen conversations
make up the play of the Misanthrope. The same
situation, five or six times renewed, is the whole oiVEcoU
des Femmes. These pieces are made out of nothing.
VOL. IL 2d

402 THE CLASSIC AGR book ra.

They have no need of incidents, they find ample space
in the compass of one room and one day, without
surprises, without decoration, with an arras and four
arm-chairs. This paucity of matter throws out the
ideas more clearly and quickly; in fact, their whole
aim is to bring those ideas prominently forward ; the
simplicity of the subject, the progress of the action, the
linking together of the scenes, — to this everything tends.
At every step clearness increases, the impression is
deepened, vice stands out : ridicule is piled up, imtil,
before so many apt and united appeals, laughter forces
its way and breaks forth. And this laughter is not a
mere outburst of physical amusement ; it is the judg-
ment which incites it The writer is a philosopher,
who brings us into contact with a universal truth by
a particular example. We understand through him, as
through La Bruy^re or Nicole, the force of prejudice,
the obstinacy of conventionality, the blindness of lova
The couplets of his dialogue, like the arguments of
their treatises, are but the worked out. proof and the
logical justification of a preconceived conclusion. We
philosopliise with him on humanity ; we think because
he has thought. And he has only thought thus in the
character of a Frenchman, for an audience of French
men of the world. In him we taste a national plea-
sure. French refined and systematic intelligence, the
most exact in seizing on the subordination of ideas, the
most ready in separating ideas from matter, the most
fond of clear and tangible ideas, finds in him its
nourishment and its echo. None who has sought to
show us mankind, has led us by a straighter and
easier mode to a more distinct and speaking portrait
I will add, to a more pleasing portrait^ — and this is the

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 403

main talent of comedy: it consists in keeping back what
is hateful ; and observe that which is hateful aboimds
in the world. As soon as you will paint the world
truly, philosophically, you meet with vice, injustice, and
everywhere indignation ; amusement flees before anger
and morality. Consider the basis of Tartnffe; an
obscene pedant, a red-faced hypocritical wretch, who,
palming himself off on a decent and refined family,
tries to drive the son away, marry the daughter,
corrupt the w^fe, ruin and imprison the father, and
almost succeeds in it, not by clever plots, but by
vulgar mummery, and by the coarse audacity of his
caddish disposition. What could be more repelling?
"And how is amusement to be drawn from such a
subject, where Beaumarchais and La Bruyire failed?^
Similarly, in the Misanthrope, is not the spectacle of a
loyally sincere and honest man, very much in love,
whom his virtue finally overwhelms with ridicule and
drives from society, a sad sight to see ? Eousseau was
annoyed that it should produce laughter; and if we
were to look upon the subject, not in Molifere, but in
itself, we should find enough to revolt our natural
generosity. Eecall his other plots; Georges Dandin
mystified, G(5ronte beaten, Amolphe duped, Harpagon
plimdered, Sganarelle married, girls seduced, louts
thrashed, simpletons turned financiers. There are
sorrows here, and deep ones ; many would rather weep
than laugh at them. Amolphe, Dandin, Harpagon,
are almost tragic characters; and when we see them
in the world instead of the theatre, we are not disposed
to sarcasm, but to pity. Picture to yourself the

^ Onuphre, in La Bniy^re's OaraeUres, ch. ziii dc la Mode;
BegearSj in Beaumarchais la Mhrt Coupable,

404 THE CLASSIC AOK book hl

originals from whom Moli^re has taken his doctors.
Consider this venturesome experimentalist, who, in the
interest of science, tries a new saw, or inoculates a
virus ; think of his long nights at the hospital, the wan
patient carried on a mattress to the operating table, and
stretching out his leg to the knife ; or again imagLue the
peasant's bed of straw in the damp cottage, where an
old dropsical mother lies choking,^ while her children
grudgingly count up the crowns she has already cost
them. You quit such scenes deeply moved, filled
with sympathy for human misery; you discover that
life, seen near and face to face, is a mass of trivial
harshnesses and of grievous passions ; you are tempted,
if you wish to depict it, to enter into the mire of
sorrows whereon Balzac and Shakspeare have built:
you see in it no other poetry than that audacious
reasoning power which from such a confusion abstracts
the master-forces, or the light of genius which flickers
over the swarm and the falls of so many polluted and
wounded wretches. How everything changes under
the hand of a mercurial Frenchman ! how all this
human ugliness is blotted out ! how amusing is the
spectacle which Moli^re has arranged for us ! how we
ought to thank the great artist for having transformed
his subject so well ! At last we have a cheerful world,
on canvas at least ; we could not have it otherwise, but
this we have. How pleasant it is to forget truth!
what an art is that which divests us of ourselves!
what a point of view which converts the contortions of
suffering into funny grimaces ! Gaiety has come
upon us, the dearest possession of a Frenchman. The
soldiers of Villars used to dance that they might forget

^ Consultations of Sganarelle in the M6decin mcUgrS lui.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 405

they had no longer any bread. Of all French posses-
sions, too, it is the best. This gift does not destroy
thought, but it masks it. In Moli^re, truth is at the
bottom, but concealed ; he has heard the sobs of human
tragedy, but he prefers not to re-echo them. It is quite
enough to feel our woimds smart ; let us not go to the
theatre to see them again. Philosophy, while it reveals
them, advises us not to think of them too much. Let
us enliven our condition with the gaiety of easy conversa-
tion and light wit, as we would the chamber of sickness.
Let us cover Tartuflfe, Harpagon, the doctors, with out-
rageous ridicule: ridicule will make us forget their
vices ; they will afford us amusement instead of causing
horror. Let Alceste be grumpy and awkward. It is
in the first place true, because our more valiant virtues
are only the outbreaks of a temper out of harmony with
circumstances; but, in addition, it wiU be amusing.
His mishaps will cease to make him the martyr of
justice ; they will only be the consequences of a cross-
grained character. As to the mystifications of husbands,
tutors, and fathers, I fancy that we are not to see in
them a concerted attack on society or morality. We
are only entertaining ourselves for one evening, nothing
more. The syringes and thrashings, the masquerades
and dances, prove that it is a sheer piece of buffoonery.
Do not be afraid that philosophy wiU perish in a pan-
tomime ; it is present even in the Mariage ford, even
in the Malade imaginaire. It is the mark of a French-
man and a man of the world to clothe everything, even
that which is serious, in laughter. When he is think-
ing, he does not always wish to show it. In his most
violent moments he is still the master of the house, the
polite host; he conceals from you his thoughts or

406 THE CLASSIC AOK book iil

his suffering. Mirabeau^ when in agony, said to one
of his friends with a smile, " Come, you who take an
interest in plucky deaths, you shall see mine ! " The
French talk in this style when they are depicting life ;
no other nation knows how to philosophise smartly, and
die with good taste.

This is the reason why in no other nation comedy,
while it continues comic, affords a moral ; Molifere is
the only man who gives us models without getting
pedantic, without trenching on the tragic, without
growing solemn. This model is the " respectable man,"
as the phrase was, PhUinte, Ariste, Clitandre, Eraste;^
there is no other who can at the same time instruct and
amuse us. His talent has reflection for its basis, but
it is cultivated by the world. His character has
honesty for its basis, but it is in harmony with the
world. You may imitate him without transgressing
either reason or duty ; he is neither a coxcomb nor a
roisterer. You can imitate him without neglecting
your interests or making yourself ridiculous ; he is
neither an ignoramus nor unmannerly. He has
read and understands the jargon of Trissotin and
Lycidas, but in order to pierce them through and
through, to beat them with their own arguments, to set
the gallery in a roar at their expense. He wUl discuss
even morality and religion, but in a style so natural,
with proofs so clear, with warmth so genuine, that he
interests women, and is listened to by men of the world.
He knows man, and reasons about him, but in such
brief sentences, such living delineations, such pungent
humour, that his philosophy is the best of entertain-
ments. He is faithful to his ruined mistress, his

^ Amongst womeD, ^liante, Henriette, £lise, Uranie, Elmire.

/\

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 407

calumniated friend, but gracefully, without fuss. All
his actions, even noble ones, have an easy way about
them which adorns them; he does nothing without
pleasantness. His great talent is knowledge of the
world ; he shows it not only in the trivial circumstances
of every-day life, but in the most passionate scenes, the
most embarrassing positions. A noble swordsman
wants to take Philinte, the "respectable man," as
his second in a duel; he reflects a moment, excuses
himself in a score of phrases, and *' without playing the
Hector," leaves the bystanders convinced that he is no
coward. Armando insults him, then throws herself in
his arms ; he politely averts the storm, declines the re-
conciliation with the most loyal frankness, and without
employing a single falsehood, leaves the spectators con-
vinced that he is no boor. When he loves ifeliante,^
who prefers Alceste, and whom Alceste may possibly
marry, he proposes to her with a complete delicacy and
dignity, without lowering himself, without recrimina-
tion, without wronging himself or his friend. When
Oronte reads him a sonnet, he does not assume in the
fop a nature which he has not, but praises the conven-
tional verses in conventional language, and is not so
clumsy as to display a poetical judgment which would
be out of place. He takes at once his tone from the
circumstances; he perceives instantly what he must
say and what be silent about, in what degree and in
what gradations, what exact expedient will reconcile
truth and conventional propriety, how far he ought to
go or where to take his stand, what faint line separates
decorum from flattery, truth from awkwardness. On

^ Ck)iDpare the admirable tact and coolness of £liante, Henriette,
and Elmire.

408 THE CLASSIC A6K book m.

this narrow path he proceeds free from embarrassment
or mistakes, never put out of his way by the shocks or
changes of circumstance, never allowing the calm smile
of politeness to quit his lips, never omitting to receive
with a laugh of good humour the nonsense of his
neighbour. This cleverness, entirely French, reconciles
in him fundamental honesty and worldly breeding;
without it, he would be altogether on the one side or
the other. In this way comedy finds its hero half-way
between the rouS and the preacher.

Such a theatre depicts a race and an aga This
mixture of solidity and elegance belongs to the seven-
teenth century, and belongs to France. The world does
not deprave, it develops Frenchmen ; it polished then
not only their manners and their homes, but also their
sentiments and ideas. Conversation provoked thought ;
it was no mere talk, but an inquiry ; with the exchange
of news, it called forth the interchange of reflections.
Theology and philosophy entered into it ; morals, and
the observation of the heart, formed its daily pabu-
limi. Science kept up its vitality, and lost only its
aridity. Pleasantness cloaked reason, but did not
smother it. Frenchmen never think better than in
society ; the play of features excites them ; their ready
ideas flash into lightning, in their shock with the ideas
of others. The varied current of conversation suits
their fits and starts; the frequent change of subject
fosters their invention ; the pungency of piquant
speeches reduces truth to small but precious coin, suit-
able to the lightness of their hands. And the heart is
no more tainted by it than the inteUigenca The French-
man is of a sober temperament, with little taste for the
brutishness of the drunkard, for violent joviality, for the

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 409

riot of loose suppers ; he is moreover gentle, obliging,
always ready to please ; in oitler to set him at ease he
needs that flow of goodwOl and elegance which polite
society creates and cherishes. And in accordance there-
with, he shapes his temperate and amiable inclinations
into maxims ; it is a point of honour with him to be ser-
viceable and refined. Such is the gentleman, the product
of society in a sociable race. It was not so with the
English. Their ideas do not spring up in chance con-
versation, but by the concentration of solitary thought ;
this is the reason why ideas were then wanting. Their
gentlemanly feelings are not the fruit of sociable in-
stincts, but of personal reflection ; that is why gentle-
manly feelings were then at a discoimt. The brutish
foimdation remained; the outside alone was smooth.
Manners were gentle, sentiments harsh; speech was
studied, ideas frivolous. Thought and refinement of soul
were rare, talent and fluent wit abimdant. There was
politeness of manner, not of heart ; they had only the
set rules and the conventionalities of life, its giddiness
and heedlessness.

VII.

The EngUsh comedy-writers paint these vices, and
possess them. Their talent and their stage are tainted
by them. Art and philosophy are absent. The authors
do not advance upon a general idea, and they do not
proceed by the most direct method. They put together
ill, and are embarrassed by materials. Their pieces
have generally two intermingled plots, manifestly dis-
tinct,^ combined in order to multiply incidents, and

^ Dryden boasts of this. With him, we always find a complete
comedy grossly amalgamated with a complete tragedy.

410 THE CLASSIC A6K book m.

because the public demands a multitude of characters
and facts. A strong current of boisterous action is
necessary to stir up tiieir dense appreciation ; they do
as the Eomans did, who packed several Greek plays
into one. They grew tired of the French simplicity of
action, because they had not the French refined tasta
The two series of actions mingle and jostle one with
another. We cannot see where we are going ; every
moment we are turned out of our path. The scenes
are Ol connected ; they change twenty times from place
to place. When one scene begins to develop itself, a
deluge of incidents interrupts. An irrelevant dialogue
drags on between the incidents, suggesting a book with
the notes introduced promiscuously into the text. There
is no plan carefully conceived and rigorously carried
out ; they took, as it were, a plan, and wrote out the
scenes one after another, pretty much as they came
into their head. Probability is not well cared for.
There are poorly arranged disguises, ill simulated folly,
mock marriages, and attacks by robbers worthy of the
comic opera. In order to obtain a sequence of ideas
and probability, we must set out from some general idea.
The conception of avarice, hypocrisy, the education of
women, iU-assorted marriages, arranges and binds to-
gether by its individual power incidents which are to
reveal it. But in the English comedy we look in
vain for such a conception. Congreve, Farquhar,
Vanbrugh, are only men of wit, not thinkers. They
skim the surface of things, but do not penetrate. They
play with their characters. They aim at success, at
amusement. They sketch caricatures, they spin out in
lively fashion a vain and bantering conversation ; they
make answers clash with one another, fling forth para-

CHAP. 1. THE RESTORATION. 411

doxes ; their nimble fingers manipulate and juggle with
the incidents in a himdred ingenious and unlooked-for
ways. They have animation, they aboimd in gesture
and repartee ; the constant bustle of the stage and its
lively spirit surroimd them with continual excitement.
But the pleasure is only skin-deep; we have seen
nothing of the eternal foundation and the real nature
of mankind ; we carry no thought away ; we have passed
an hour, and that is all; the amusement teaches us
nothing, and serves only to fill up the evenings of
coquettes and coxcombs.

Moreover, this pleasure is not real; it has no re-
semblance to the hearty laughter of Moli^ra In English
comedy there is always an undercurrent of tartness.
We have seen this, and more, in Wycherley ; the others,
though less cruel, joke sourly. Their characters in a
joke say harsh things to one another ; they amuse
themselves by hurting each other; a Frenchman is
pained to hear this interchange of mock politeness ; he
does not go to blows by way of fun. Their dialogue
turns naturally to virulent satire ; instead of covering
vice, it makes it prominent; instead of making it
ridiculous, it makes it odious :

" Clarissa, Prithee, tell me how you have passed the night ? . .

Araminta. Why, I have been studying all the ways my
brain could produce to plague my husband.

CI, No wonder indeed you look so fresh this morning,
after the satisfaction of such pleasing ideas all night.*' ^

These women are really wicked, and that too openly.
Throughout vice is crude, pushed to extremes, served up
with material adjuncts. Lady Fidget says : " Our virtue

^ Vanbragh, Confederacy, iL 1.

412 THE CLASSIC AOK book m.

is like the statesman's religion, the quaker's word, the
gamester's oath, and the great man's honour; but to
cheat those that trust us."^ Or again : " If you'll con-
sult the widows of this town," says a yoimg lady who
does not wish to marry again, " the/U tell you, you
should never take a lease of a house you can hire for a
quarter's warning." ^ Or again : " My heart cut a caper
up to my mouth," says a young heir, " when I heard
my father was shot through the head."* The gentlemen
collar each other on the stage, treat the ladies roughly
before spectators, contrive an adultery not far off between
the wings. Base or ferocious parts abound. There
are furies like Mrs. Loveit and Lady Touchwood. There
are swine like parson Bull and the go-between Coupler.
Lady Touchwood wants to stab her lover on the stage.*
Coupler, on the stage, uses gestures which recall the
court of Henry III. of France. Wretches like Fainall
and Maskwell are unmitigated scoundrels, and their
hatefulness is not even cloaked by the grotesque. Even
honest women like Silvia and Mrs. Sullen are plunged
into the most shocking situations. Nothing shocked the
English public of those days ; they had no real educa-
tion, but only its varnish.

There is a forced connection between the mind of a
writer, the world which surrounds him, and the char-
acters which he produces; for it is from this world
that lie draws the materials out of which he composes
them. The sentiments which he contemplates in others

* Wycherley, The Cmintry Wife, v. 4.

* Vanbrugh, Relapx^ ii. end. • Ihid.

* She says to Maskwell, her lover : ** You want but leisure to
invent fresh falsehood, and soothe me to a fond belief of all your
fictions ; but I will stab the lie that's forming in your heart, and save
a sin, in pity to your soul" — Congreve, Double Dealer , v. 17.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 413

and feels himself are graduallj arranged into characters ;
he can only invent after his given model and his
acquired experience ; and his characters only manifest
what he is, or abridge what he has seen. Two features
are prominent in this world ; they are prominent also on
this stage. All the successful characters can be reduced
to two classes — natural beings on the one part, and
artificial on the other ; the first with the coarseness and
shamelessness of their primitive inclinations, the second
with the frivolities and vices of worldly habits : the first
imcultivated, their simplicity revealing nothing but their
innate baseness ; the second cultivated, their refinement
instilling into them nothing but a new corruption.
And the talent of the writers is suited to the painting
of these two groups : they possess the grand English
faculty, which is the knowledge of ex;act detail and
real sentiments ; they see gestures, surroundings, dresses ;
they hear the soimds of voices, and they have the
courage to exhibit them ; they have inherited, very
little, and at a great distance, and in spite of themselves,
still they have inherited from Shakspeare ; they mani-
pulate freely, and without any softening, the coarse
harsh red colour which alone can bring out the figures
of their brutes. On the other hand, they have animation
and a good style ; they can express the thoughtless
chatter, the frolicsome affectations, the inexhaustible and
capricious abundance of drawing-room stupidities ; they
have as much liveliness as the maddest, and at the same
time they speak as well as the best instructed ; they
can give the model of witty conversation ; they have
lightness of touch, brilliancy, and also facility, exactness,
without which you cannot draw the portrait of a man

414 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

of the world. They find naturally on their palette the
strong colours which suit their barbarians^ and the
pretty tints which suit their exquisites.

VIII.

First there is the blockhead, Squire Sullen, a low kind
of sot, of whom his wife speaks in this fashion : " After
his man and he had rolled about the room, like sick
passengers in a storm, he comes floimce into bed, dead
as a salmon into a fishmonger's basket ; his feet cold
as ice, his breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and
his face as greasy as his flannel nightcap. matrimony !
He tosses up the clothes with a barbarous swing over
his shoulders, disorders the whole economy of my bed,
leaves me half naked, and my whole night's comfort is
the tuneable serenade of that wakeful nightingale, his
nose f ^ Sir John Brute says : " What the plague did
I marry her (his wife) for ? I knew she did not like
me; if she had, she would have lain with me."* He
turns his drawing-room into a stable, smokes it foul to
drive the women away, throws his pipe at their heads,
drinks, swears, and curses. Coarse words and oaths
flow through his conversation like filth through a gutter.
He gets drunk at the tavern, and howls out, "Damn
morality ! aud damn the watch ! and let the constable
be married."^ He cries out tliat he is a free-bom
Englishman ; he wants to go out and break everything.
He leaves the inn with other besotted scamps, and* at-
tacks the women in the street He robs a tailor who
was carrying a doctor's gown, puts it on, thrashes the
guard. He is seized and taken by the constable ; on

' Farqnhar, The Beaux Stratagem^ ii 1.
« Vanbrugh, Prwokcd Wife, y. 6. » Ibid, iii 2.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 415

the road he breaks out into abuse, and ends by propos-
ing to him, amid the hiccups and stupid reiterations of
a drunken man, to go and find out somewhere a bottle and
a girL He returns home at last, covered with blood and
mud, growling like a dog, with red swollen eyes, calling
his wife a slut and a liar. He goes to her, forcibly
embraces her, and as she turns away, cries, " I see it
goes damnably against your stomach — and therefore —
kiss me again. (Kisses and tumbles her.) So, now you
being as dirty and as nasty as myself, we may go pig
together."^ He wants to get a cup of cold tea out of
the closet, kicks open the door, and discovers his wife's
and niece's gallants. He storms, raves madly with his
clammy tongue, then suddenly falls asleep. His valet
comes and takes the insensible burden on his shoulders.^
It is the portrait of a mere animal, and I fancy it is
not a nice one.

That is the husband ; let us look at the father. Sir
Tunbelly Climisey, a country gentleman, elegant, if any
of them were. Tom Fashion knocks at the door of the
mansion, which looks like "Noah's ark," and where they
receive people as in a besieged city. A servant appears
at a window with a blunderbuss in his hand, who is at
last with great difficidty persuaded that he ought to let
his master know that somebody wishes to see him.
" Ralph, go thy weas, and ask Sir Tunbelly if he pleases
to be waited upon. And dost hear ? call to nurse that
she riiay lock up Miss Hoyden before the geat's open." *
Please to observe that in this house they keep a

* Vanbnigh, Provoked Wife, v. 2.

' The valet Hasor says to his master : *' Come to your kennel, you
cnckoldy dronken sot you." — Ibid.
' Yanbnigh's Selapae, iii. 8.

416 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

watch over the girls. Sir Tunbelly comes up with his
people, armed with guns, pitchforks, scythes, and clubs,
in no amiable mood, and wants to know the name of
his visitor. " Till I know your name, I shall not ask
you to come into my house ; and when I know your
name — 'tis six to four I don't ask you neither."^ He
is like a watchdog growling and looking at the calves
of an intruder. But he presently learns that this
intruder is his future son-in-law; he utters some
exclamations, and makes his excuses. " Cod's my life !
I ask your lordship's pardon ten thousand times. {To
a servant) Here, run in a-doors quickly. Get a
Scotch-coal fire in the great parlour ; set all the Turkey-
work chairs in their places ; get the great brass candle-
sticks out, and be sure stick the sockets full of laurel.
Run ! . . . And do you hear, run away to nurse, bid
her let Miss Hoyden loose again, and if it was not
shifting-day, let her put on a clean tucker, quick !" ^ The
pretended son-in-law wants to marry Hoyden straight
oflF. " Not so soon neither ! that's shooting my girl
before you bid her stand. . . . Besides, my wench's
wedding-gown is not come home yet"* The other
suggests that a speedy marriage will save money.
Spare money ? says the father, " Udswoons, I'll give my
wench a wedding dinner, though I go to grass with the
king of Assyria for*t. . . . Ah! poor girl, she'll be
scared out of her wits on her wedding-night; for,
honestly speaking, she does not know a man from a
woman but by his beard and his breeches." * Fopping-
ton, the real son-in-law, arrives. Sir Timbelly, taking
him for an impostor, calls him a dog ; Hoyden proposes

^ Vanbnigh's Relapse^ iiL 3. * Ibid,

a Ibid. iu. 6. * Ibid.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 417

to drag him in the horse-pond; they bind him hand
and foot, and thrust him into the dog-kennel; Sir
Tunbelly puts his fist under his nose, and threatens to
knock his teeth down his throat Afterwards, having
discovered the impostor, he says, " My lord, will you
cut his throat? or shall I? . . . Here, give me my
dog-whip. . . . Here, here, here, let me beat out his
brains, and that will decide all."i He raves, and
wants to fall upon Tom Fashion with his fists. Such
is the coimtry gentleman, of high birth and a farmer,
boxer and drinker, brawler and beast. There steams
up from all these scenes a smell of cooking, the noise of
riot, the odour of a dimghilL

Like father like child. What a candid creature is
Miss Hoyden ! She grumbles to herself, " It's well I
have a husband a-eoming, or, ecod, I'd marry the beaker ;
I would so ! Nobody can knock at the gate, but pre-
sently I must be locked up; and here's the yoimg
greyhound bitch can run loose about the house all the
day long, she can ; 'tis very well." ^ When the nurse
tells her her future husband has arrived, she leaps for
joy, and kisses the old woman. " Lord ! I'll go put
on my laced smock, though I'm whipped till the blood
run down my heels fbr't." * Tom comes himself, and
asks her if she will be his wife. ^ Sir, I never disobey
my father in anything but eating of green gooseberries."
But your father wants to wait . * . "a whole week."
"A week! — ^Why I jshall be an old woman by that
time." * I cannot : give all her answers. There is
the spirit of a goat behind her kitchen-talk. She
marries Tom secretly on the spot, and the chaplain

' Yanbrogh's JUlapfe, y. 5. * Und, iiL 4.

» Ihid. * Bid. iv. 1.

VOL II. 2 E

418 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

wishes them many children. " Ecod," she says, " with
all my heart ! the more the merrier, I say ; ha ! nurse !"^
But Lord Foppington, her real intended, turns up, and
Tom makes off. Instantly her plan is formed. She
bids the nurse and chaplain hold their tongues. " If
you two will be sure to hold your tongues, and not say
a word of what's past, I'll e'en marry this lord too."
" What," says nurse, " two husbands, my dear ? "
" Why, you had three, good nurse, you may hold your
tongua" ' She nevertheless takes a dislike to the lord,
and very soon ; he is not well made, he hardly gives her
any pocket-money ; she hesitates between the two. " If
I leave my lord, I must leave my lady too ; and when I
rattle about the streets in my coach, they'll only say,
There goes mistress — mistress — mistress what ? Whaf s
this man's name I have married, nurse ? " " Squire
Fashion." " Squire Fashion is it ? — ^Well, 'Squire, thaf s
better than nothing.* . . . Love him ! why do you think
I love him, nurse ? ecod, I would not care if he were
hanged, so I were but once married to him ! — ^No —
that which pleases me, is to think what work I'll make
when I get to London ; for when I am a wife and a
lady both, nurse, ecod, I'll flaunt it with the best of
'em." * But she is cautious all the same. She knows
that her father has his dog's whip handy, and that he

^ Vanbrugh's Relapse, iv. 4. The character of the nurse is ezcellent
Tom Fashion thanks her for the training she has given Hoyden : *' Alas,
all I can boast of is, I gave her pure good milk, and so your honour
would have said, an you had seen how the poor thing sucked it. — Eh !
God's blessing on the sweet face on*t ! how it used to hang at this poor
teat, and suck and squeeze, and kick and sprawl it would, till the
belly on't was so full, it would drop oflf like a leech. " This is good,
even after Juliet's nurse in Shakspeare.

» Ibid. iv. 6. » Ibid, V. 6. *Ibid. n. X.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 419

will give her a good shake. " But, d'ye hear ? " she
says to the nurse. "Pray take care of one thing:
when the business comes to break out, be sure you get
between i^e and my father, for you know his tricks :
he'U knock me down."^ Here is your true moral
ascendency. For such a character, there is no other,
and Sir Tunbelly does well to keep her tied up, and* to
let her taste a discipline of daily stripes.^

IX.

Let us accompany this modest character to town,
and place her with her equals in fine society. All
these artless ladies do wonders there, both in the way
of actions and maxims. Wycherley's Country Wife
gives us the tone. When one of them happens to be
partly honest,^ she has the manners and the boldness
of a hussar in petticoats. Others seem bom with the
souls of courtesans and procuresses. " If I marry my
lord Aimwell," says Dorinda, " there will be title, place,
and precedence, the Park, the play, and the drawing-
room, splendour, equipage, noise, and flambeaux. — Hey,
my lady Aimwell's servants there ! Lights, lights to
the stairs ! My lady Aimwell's coach put forward! Stand
by, make room for her ladyship ! — ^Are not these things
moving ? " * She is candid, and so are others — Corinna,
Miss Betty, Belinda, for example. Belinda says to her
aunt, whose virtue is tottering: "The sooner you

^ Vanbrugh's Relapse^ v. 5.

' See also the character of a young stupid blockhead. Squire
Humphrey. (Vanbrugh's Journey to London). He has only a single
idea, to be always eating.

• Wycherley's Hippolita ; Farquhar's Silvia.

^ Farquhar's Beavx Stratagem, iv, 1.

420 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

capitulate the better."^ Further on, when she has
decided to many Heartfree, to save her aunt who is
compromised, she makes a confession of faith which
promises well for the future of her new spouse ; "Were't
not for your affair in the balance, I should go near to
pick up some odious man of quality yet, and only
take poor Heartfree for a gallant."^ These young ladies
are clever, and in all cases apt to follow good instruction.
Listen to Miss Prue : " Look you here, madam, then,
what Mr. Tattle has given ma — Look you here, cousin,
here's a snuff-box : nay. there's snuff in't ;— here. wiU
you have any? — Oh, good! how sweet it is 1 — ^Mr. Tattle
is all over sweet ; his peruke is sweet, and his gloves
are sweet, and his handkerchief is sweet, pure sweet,
sweeter than roses. — Smell him, mother, madam, I
mean. — He gave me this ring for a kiss. . . . Smell,
cousin; he says, he'll give me something that will
make my smocks smell this way. Is not it pure ? —
It*s better than lavender, mim. — Fm resolved I won't
let nurse put any more lavender among my smocks —
ha, cousin ? " * It is the siUy chatter of a young magpie,
who flies for the first tima Tattle, alone with her,
tells her he is going to make love :

" Miss Prue, Well ; and how will you make love to me I
come, I long to have you begin. Must I make love too ? yoa
must tell me how.

Tattle, You must let me speak, miss, you must not speak
first ; I must ask you questions, and you must answer.

Miss P. What, is it like the catechism ?— come then, aak me.

T. D'ye think you can love me 1

Miss P. Yes.

1 Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife, iiL 8. « Ibid, ▼. 2.

• CoDgreye*8 Love for Lone^ ii 10.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 421

T, Pooh ! pojc ! you must not say yes already ; I shan^t care
a farthing for you then in a twinkling.

Mus P. What must I say then 9

T. Why, you must say no, or you believe not, or you can't
tell.

Miss P. Why, must I tell a lie then 1

T, Yes, if you'd be well-bred ; — all well-bred persons lie. —
Besides, you are a woman, you must never speak what you
think : your words must contradict your thoughts ; but your
actions may contradict your words. So, when I ask you, if
you can love me, you must say no, but you must love me too.
If I tell you you are handsome, you must deny it, and say I
flatter you. But you must think yourself more charming than
I speak you: and like me, for the beauty which I say you
have, as much as if I had it myself. If I ask you to kiss me,
you must be angry, but you must not refuse me. . . .

Miss P. Lord, I swear this is pure ! — I like it better than
our old-fashioned country way of speaking one's mind; — and
must not you lie too ?

T. Hum ! — Yes ; but you must believe I speak truth.

Miss P. Gemini ! well, I always had a great mind to tell
lies ; but they frighted me, and said it was a sin.

T. Well, my pretty creature ; will you make me happy by
giving me a kiss 1

Miss P. No, indeed; I'm angry at you« (Runs and kisses
him,)

T, Hold, hold, that's pretty well ; — ^but you should not have
given it me, but have suffered me to have taken it.

Miss P. Well, we'll do it again.

r. With all my heart. Now, then, my little angeL {Kisses
her.)

Miss P. Pish !

T. That's right — again, my charmer ! {Kisses again,)

Miss P. fy I nay, now I can't abide you.

422 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

T. Admirable ! that was as well as if you had been bom
and bred in Covent Garden." ^

She makes such rapid progress^ that we must stop
the quotation forthwith. And mark, what is bred in
the bone will come out in the flesh. All these charm-
ing characters soon employ the language of kitchen-
maids. When Ben, the dolt of a sailor, wants to make
love to Miss Prue, she sends him off with a flea in his
ear, raves, lets loose a string of cries and coarse expres-
sions, calls him a " great sea-calf." '* What does father
mean," he says, " to leave me alone, as soon as I come
home, with such a dirty dowdy? Sea-calf! I an't
calf enough to lick your chalked face, you cheese-curd,
you." Moved by these amenities, she breaks out into
a rage, weeps, calls him a "stinking tar-barrel."*
People come and put a stop to this first essay at
gallantry. She fires up, declares she will marry
Tattle, or the butler, if she cannot get a better man.
Her father says, " Hussy, you shall have a rod." She
answers, " A fiddle of a rod ! I'll have a husband : and
if you won't get me one, 1*11 get one for myself. I'll
marry our Robin the butler."^ Here are pretty and
prancing mares if you like; but decidedly, in these

* Congreve's Love far Love^ ii. 11.

* **Miss Prue, Well, and there's a handsome gentleman, and a fine
gentleman, and a sweet gentleman, that was here, that loyes me, and
I lore him ; and if he sees you speak to me any more, he'll thrash
your jacket for you, he will ; you great sea-calf.

Be^%. What ! do you mean that fair-weather spark that was here
just now ? Will he thrash my jacket ? Let'n, let'n, let'n — but an he
cornea near me, mayhap I may give him a salt-eel for's supper, for all
that. What does father mean, to leave me alone, as soon as I come
home, with such a dirty dowdy ? Sea-calf ! I an't calf em)ugh to lick
your chalked face, you cheese-curd you. " — Ibid, iii. 7.

' Ibid. V. 6.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 423

authors' hands, the natural man becomes nothing but a
waif from the stable or the kenneL

Will you be better pleased by the educated man ?
The worldly life which they depict is a regular carni-
val, and the heads of their heroines are full of wild
imaginations and imchecked gossip. You may see in
Congreve how they chatter, with what a flow of words
and affectations, with what a shrill and modulated voice,
with what gestures, what twisting of arms and neck,
what looks raised to heaven, what genteel airs, what
grimaces. Lady Wishfort speaks :

'' But art thou sure Sir Rowland will not fail to come 9 or
will he not fail when he does come 9 Will he be importunate,
Foible, and push? For if he should not be importunate, I
shall never break decorums : — I shaU die with confusion, if I
am forced to advanca — Oh no, I can never advance ! — I shall
swoon, if he should expect advances. No, I hope Sir Rowland
is better bred than to put a lady to the necessity of breaking
her forms. I won't be too coy neither — I won't give him
despair — but a little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is
alluring.

Foible, A little scorn becomes your ladyship.

Lady Wishfort. Yes, but tenderness becomes me best — a sort
of dyingness — ^you see that picture has a sort of a — ^ha, Foible I
a swinuningness in the eye^ — ^yes, Fll look so — ^my niece affects
it ; but she wants features. Is Sir Rowland handsome 1 Let
my toilet be removed — Fll dress above. I'll receive Sir
Rowland here. Is he handsome 9 Don't answer me. I won't
know : 111 be surprised, I'll be taken by surprise.^ . . . And
how do I look, Foible 1

F. Most killing well madam.

Lady W, Well, and how shall I receive him I in what
figure shall I give his heart the first impression 1 . . . ShaU I

1 Congreve, The Way of the World, ilL 6.

424 THE CLASSIO AGK book m.

sit ? — no, I won't sit — 1*11 walk — ay, I'll walk from the door
upon his entrance ; and then turn full upon him — no, that will
be too sudden. I'll lie — ay, 111 lie down — 111 receive him in
my little dressing-room ; there's a couch — ^yes, yes, I'll give the
first impression on a couch. I won't lie neither ; but loU and
lean upon one elbow : with one foot a little dangling off, jog-
ging in a thoughtful way — yes — and then as soon as he
appears, start, ay, start, and be surprised, and rise to meet
him in a pretty disorder." ^

Tliese hesitations of a finished coquette become still
more vehement at the critical moment Lady Plyant
thinks herself beloved by Mellefont, who does not love
her at all, and tries in vain to undeceive her.

** Mellefont. For heaven's sake, madam.

Lady Plyant. 0, name it no more ! — Bless me, how can
you talk of heaven ! and have so much wickedness in your
heart? May be you don't think it a sin^ — They say some
of you gentlemen don't think it a sin. — May be it is no sin to
them that don't think it so ; indeed, if I did not think it a sin
— but still my honour, if it were no sin. — But then, to marry
my daughter, for the conveniency of frequf nt opportunities, I'll
never consent to that ; as sure as can be I'll break the match.

Mel. Death and amazement. — Madam, upon my knees.

Lady P. Nay, nay, rise up ; come, you shall see my good
nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his
passion : 'tis not your fault ; nor I swear it is not mine. How
can I help it, if I have charms ? and how can you help it if
you are made a captive) I swear it is pity it should be a
fault. But my honour, — well, but your honour too — ^but the
sin ! — well, but the necessity — Lord, here is somebody com-
ing, I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime ;
and strive as much as can be against it, — strive, be sure — but

J Congreve, Th^ Way of the World, iv.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 425

don't be melancholic, don't despair. — But never think that I'll
grant you anything ; Lord, no. — But be sure you lay aside
all thoughts of the marriage : for though I know you don't love
Cynthia, only as a blind to your passion for me, yet it will
make me jealous. — Lord, what did I say ? jealous ! no, no ;
I can't be jealous, for I must not love you — therefore don't
hope, — but don't despair neither. — 0, they're coming ! I must
fly." 1

She escapes and we will not follow her.

This giddiness, this volubility, this pretty corruption,
these reckless and affected airs, are collected in the
most brilliant, the most worldly portrait of the stage we
are discussing, that of Mrs. Millamant, " a fine lady,"
as the Dramatis Personae say.^ She enters, " with her
fan spread and her streamers out," dragging a train of
furbelows and ribbons, passing through a crowd of
laced and bedizened fops, in splendid perukes, who
flutter about her path, haughty and wanton, witty and
scornful, toying with gallantries, petulant, with a horror
of every grave word and all nobility of action, falling
in only with change and pleasure. She laughs at the
sermons of Mirabell, her suitor: "Sententious Mira-
bell 1 — Prithee don't look with that violent and inflex-
ible wise face, like Solomon at the dividing of the child
in an old tapestry-hanging.^ . . . Ha ! ha ! ha ! — ^par-
don me, deajr creature, though I grant you 'tis ct little
barbarous, ha ! ha! ha!"*

She breaks out into laughter, then gets into a rage,
then banters, then sings, then makes faces, and
changes at every motion while we look at her. It
is a regular whirlpool ; all turns roimd in her brain as

^ Congreve, The DoubU-decUer, ii 6.
« Congreye, The Way of the JFarld. » Ihid. u. 6. * Ibid, iil 11.

426 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

in a clock when the mainspring is broken. Nothing
can be prettier than her fashion of entering on matri-
mony :

<' Millamant. Ah ! Ill never marry unless I am first made sore
of my will and pleasure ! . . . My dear hberty, shall I leave thee?
my faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you
then adieu 9 Ay — h — adieu — my morning thoughts, agreeable
wakings, indolent slumbers, all ye d(mceur8 ye sommeils du matin
adieu? — I can't do it; 'tis more than impossible — ^positively,
Mirabell, 111 lie a-bed in a morning as long as I please.

Mirabdl Then TVL get up in a morning as early as I
please.

Mill Ah ! idle creature, get up when you will — ^and d'ye
hear, I won't be called names after I'm married ; positively I
won't be called names.

Mir, Names 1

Mill. Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweet
heart, and the rest of that nauseous cant, in which men and
their wives are so fiilsomely familiar — I shall never bear that —
good Mirabell, don't let us be famihar or fond, nor kiss before
folks, like my Lady Fadler, and Sir Francis. . . . Let us never
visit together, nor go to a play together ; but let us be very
strange and well-bred : let us be as strange as if we had been
married a great while; and as well bred as if we were not
married at all. . . .

Mir, Shall I kiss your hand upon the contract ? ^

Mill, Fainall, what shall I do ? shall I have him ? I think
I must have him.

Fainall. Ay, ay, take him. What should you do ?

Mill, Well then — I'll take my death I'm in a horrid fnght —
Fainall, I shall never say it — well — I think — I'll endure you.

Faiji, Fy! fy! have him, have him, and tell him so in
plain terms : for I am sure you have a mind to him.

^ CoDgreve, The Way of the Worlds iv. 5.

.CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 427

Mill. Are youl I think I have — and the horrid man
looks as if he thought so too — well, you ridiculous thing you,
I'll have you — I won't be kissed, nor I won't be thanked — here
kiss my hand though. — So, hold your tongue now, don't say a
word," 1

The agreement is complete. I should like to see one
more article to it — a divorce "a mensd et thoro : " this
would be the genuine marriage of the worldlings, that
is a decent divorce. And I am sure that in two years
MirabeU and Millamant will come to this. Hither
tends the whole of this theatre ; for, with regard to the
women, but particularly with regard to the married
women, I have only presented their most amiable
aspects. Deeper down it is all gloomy, bitter, above all,
pernicious. It represents a household as a prison,
marriage as a warfare, woman as a rebel, adultery as
the result looked for, irregularity as a right, extravagance
as pleasure.* A woman of fashion goes to bed in the

* Congrcve, T?u Way of the World, iv. 6.

' ** Amajida, How did you live together? Berinthia. Like
man and wife, asunder. — He loved the country, I the town. He hawks
and hounds, I coaches and equipage. He eating and drinking, I card-
ing and playing. He the sound of a horn, I the squeak of a fiddle.
We were dull company at table, worse a-bed. Whenever we met, we
gave one another the spleen ; and never agreed but once, which was
about lying alone." — Vanbrugh, Edapse, Act ii ad fin.

Compare Vanbrugh, A Journey to London, Rarely has the repul-
tiveness and corruption of the brutish or worldly nature been more
vividly displayed. Little Betty and her brother, Squire Humphry,
deserve hanging.

Again. ** Afrs. Foresight. Do you think any woman honest!
Scandal. Yes, several very honest ; they'll cheat a little at cards,
sometimes ; but that's nothing. Mrs, F, Pshaw ! but virtuous, I
mean. S. Yes, faith ; I believe some women are virtuous too ; but
'tis as I believe some men are valiant, through fear. For why should
a man court danger or a woman shun pleasure ?** — Congreve, Love for
Love, iii. 14.

428 THE CLASSIC AGK book m.

morning, rises at mid- day, curses her husband, listens
to obscenities, frequents balls, haimts the plays, ruins
reputations, turns her home into a gambling-house,
borrows money, allures men, associates her honour and
fortune with debts and assignations. "We are as
wicked (as men)," says Lady Brute, " but our vices lie
another way. Men have more courage than we, so they
commit more bold impudent sins. They quarrel, fight,
swear, drink, blaspheme, and the like ; whereas we be-
ing cowards, only backbite, tell lies, cheat at cards, and
so forth." ^ An admirable resum^, in which the gentlemen
are included and the ladies too I The world has done
nothing but provide them with correct phrases and
elegant dresses. In Congreve especially they talk in the
best style; above all they know how to hand ladies
about and entertain them with news ; they are expert
in the fence of retorts and replies ; they are never out
of countenance, find means to make the most ticklish
notions understood ; they discuss very well, speak excel-
lently, make their bow still better ; but to sum up, they
are blackguards, systematical epicureans, professed sedu-
cers. They set forth inonorality in maxims, and reason
out their vice. " Give me," says one, " a man that keeps
his five senses keen and bright as his sword, that has
'em always drawn out in their just order and strength,
with his reason, as commander at the head of 'em, that
detaches 'em by turns upon whatever party of pleasure
agreeably offers, and commands 'em to retreat upon the
least appearance of disadvantage or danger. ... I love
a fine house, but let another keep it; and just so I

^ Vanbrugh, Provoked Wife, v. 2. Compare also in this piece the
character of MademoiseUe, the French chambermaid. They represent
French vice as even more shameless than English vice.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 429

love a fine woman." ^ One deliberately seduces his
friend's wife ; another under a false name gets possession
of his brother's intended. A third hires false witnesses
to secure a dowry. I must ask the reader to consult
for himself the fine stratagems of Worthy, Mirabell, and
others. They are coldblooded rascals who forge, commit
adultery, swindle, as if they had done nothing else aU
their lives. They are represented here as men of
fashion ; they are theatrical lovers, heroes, and as such
they manage to get hold of an heiress. We must go to
Mirabell for an example of this medley of corruption
and elegance, Mrs. Fainall, his former mistress, married
by him to a common friend, a miserable wretch, com-
plains to him of this hateful marriage. He appeases
her, gives her advice, shows her the precise mode, the
true expedient for setting things on a comfortable
footing. "You should have just so much disgust for
your husband, as may be sufficient to make you relish
your lover." She cries in despair, " Why did you make
me marry this man?" He smiles calmly, "Why do
we daily commit disagreeable and dangerous actions ?
to save that idol, reputation." How tender is this
argument ! How can a man better console a woman
whom he has plunged into bitter imhappiness ! What
a touching logic in the insinuation which follows : " If
the familiarities of our loves had produced that conse-
quence of which you were apprehensive, where could
you have fixed a father^s name with credit, but on a

^ Farquhar's The Beaux Stratagem, i 1 ; and in the same piece
here is the catechism of love : * * What are the objects of that passion ?
— youth, beauty, and clean linen." And from the Mock Astrologer of
Bryden : "As I am a gentleman, a man about town, one that wears
good cloths, eats, drinks, and wenches sufficiently."

430 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

husband ?" He continues his reasoning in an excellent
style ; listen to the dilemma of a man of feeling : " A
better man ought not to have been sacrificed to the
occasion; a worse had not answered to the purpose.
When you are weary of him, you know your remedy." *
Thus are a woman's feelings to be considered, especially
a woman whom we have loved. To cap all, this delicate
conversation is meant to force the poor deserted Mrs.
Fainall into a low intrigue which shall obtain for
MirabeU a pretty wife and a good dowiy. Certainly
this gentleman knows the world ; no one could better
employ a former mistress. Such are the cultivated
characters of this theatre, as dishonest as the unculti-
vated ones : having transformed their evil instincts into
systematic vices, lust into debauchery, brutality into
cjmicism, perversity into depravity, deliberate egotists,
calculating sensualists, with rules for their immorality,
reducing feeling to self-interest, honour to decorum,
happiness to pleasure.

The English Eestoration altogether was one of those
great crises which, while warping the development of a
society and a literature, show the inward spirit which
they modify, but which contradicts them. Society did
not lack vigour, nor literature talent ; men of the world
were polished, writers inventive. There was a court,
drawing-rooms, conversation, worldly life, a taste for
letters, the example of France, peace, leisure, the in-
fluence of the sciences, of politics, of theology, — in
short, all the happy circumstances which can elevate
tlie mind and civilise manners. There was the vigorous
satire of Wycherley, the sparkling dialogue and delicate
raillery of Congreve, the frank nature and animation

1 Congrere, The Wa^ofthe Wwrld, ii 4.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 431

of Vanbrugh, the manifold invention of Farquhar, in
short, all the resources which might nourish the comic
element, and offer a genuine theatre to the best construc-
tions of human intelligence. Nothing came to a head ;
all was abortive. Their age left nothing behind but the
memory of corruption ; their comedy remains a repertory
of viciousness; society had only a soiled elegance,
literature a frigid wit Their manners are gross and
trivial ; their ideas are futile or incomplete. Through
disgust and reaction, a revolution was at hand in literary
feeling and moral habits, as well as in general beliefs
and political institutions. Man was to change alto-
gether, and to turn completely round at once. The
same repugnance and the same experience were to detach
him from every aspect of his old condition. The
Englishman discovered that he was not monarchical.
Papistical, nor sceptical, but liberal, Protestant, and a
believer. He came to understand that he was not a
roisterer nor a worldling, but reflective and introspective.
He possesses a current of animal life too violent to sufiTer
him without danger to abandon himself to enjoyment ;
he needs a barrier of moral reasoning to repress his out-
breaks. There is in him a current of attention and will
too strong to suffer himself to rest content with trifles ;
he needs some weighty and serviceable labour on which
to expend his power. He needs a barrier and an
employment. He needs a constitution and a religion
which shall restrain him by duties which must be per-
formed, and which shall occupy him by rights which
must be defended. He is content only in a serious and
orderly life ; there he finds the natural groove and the
necessary outlet for his faculties and his passions.
From this time he enters upon it, and this theatre itself

432 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

exhibits the impress of it. It undoes and transfonns
itself. Collier threw discredit upon it; Addison con-
demned it National sentiment awoke on the stage;
French manners are jeered at ; the prologues celebrate
the defeats of Louis XIV. ; the license, elegance, religion
of his court, are presented imder a ridiculous or odious
light.^ Immorality gradually diminishes, marriage is
more respected, the heroines go no further than to the
verge of adultery ; ^ the roisterers are pulled up at the
critical moment ; one of them suddenly declares himself
purified, and speaks in verse, the better to msurk his
enthusiasm ; another praises marriage ; ^ some aspire in
the fifth act to an orderly life. We shall soon see
Steele writing a moral treatise called The Christian Hero,
Henceforth comedy declines and literary talent flows
into another channel Essay, novel, pamphlet, disserta-
tion, take the place of the drama; and the English
classical spirit, abandoning the kinds of writing which
are foreign to its nature, enters upon the great works
wliich are destined to immortalise it and give it
expression.

X.

Nevertheless, in this continuous decline of dramatic
invention, and in the great change of literary vitality,
some shoots strike out at distant intervals towards

^ The part of Chaplain Foigard in Forquhar's Beaux Siratagem ; of
Mademoiselle, and generally of all the French people.

* The part of Amanda in Vanbrugh's RelapM ; of Mrs. Sullen ; the
conversion of two roisterers, in the Beaux Stratagem,

* ** Though marriage be a lottery in which there are a wondrous
many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven
upon earth is written. "

'* To be capable of loving one, doubtless, is better than to possess a
thousand." — Vanbruoh.

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 433

comedy ; for mankind always seeks for entertainment^
and the theatre is always a place of entertainment
The tree once planted grows, feebly no doubt, with
long intervals of almost total dryness and almost constant
barrenness, yet subject to imperfect renewals of life, to
transitory partial blossomings, sometimes to an inferior
fruitage bursting forth from the lowest branches. Even
when the great subjects are worn out, there is still
room here and there for a happy idea. Let a wit,
clever and experienced, take it in hand, he wiU catch
up a few oddities on his way, he will introduce on the
scene some vice or fault of his time ; the public will
come in crowds, and ask no better than to recognise
itself and laugh- There was one of these successes
when Gay, in the Beggars' Opera, brought out the
rascaldom of the great world, and avenged the public
on Walpole and the court ; another, when Goldsmith,
inventing a series of mistakes, led his hero and his
audience through five acts of blimders.^ After all, if
true comedy can only exist in certain ages, ordinary
comedy can exist in any age. It is too akin to
the pamphlet, novels, satire, not to raise itself occa-
sionally by its propinquity. If I have an enemy,
instead of attacking him in a brochure, I can take my
fling at him on the stage. If I am capable of painting
a character in a story, I ani not far from having the
talent to bring out the pith of this same character in a
few turns of a dialogue. K I can quietly ridicule a
vice in a copy of verses, I shall easily arrive at making
this vice speak out from the mouth of an actor. At
least I shall be tempted to try it ; I shall be seduced
by the wonderful Mat which the footlights, declamation,

* She Stoops to Conquer,
VOL. n. 2 F

434 THE CLASSIC AGK book ni.

scenery give to an idea ; I shall try and bring my own
into this strong light ; I shall go in for it even when
it is necessary that my talent be a little or a good deal
forced for the occasion. If need be, I shall delude
myself, substitute expedients for artless originality and
true comic genius. If on a few points I am inferior
to the great masters, on some, it may be, I surpass
them ; I can work up my style, refine upon it, discover
happier words, more striking jokes, a brisker exchange
of brilliant repartees, newer images, more picturesque
comparisons; I can take from this one a character,
from the other a situation, borrow of a neighbour-
ing nation, out of old plays, good novels, biting
pamphlets, polished satires, and petty newspapers ; I
can accumulate effects, serve up to the public a
stronger and more appetising stew; above all, I can
perfect my machine, oil the wheels, plan the surprises,
the stage effects, the see-saw of the plot, like a
consummate playwright. The art of constructing
plays is as capable of development as the art of clock-
making. The farce-writer of to-day sees that the cata-
strophe of half of Moli^re's plays is ridiculous ; nay, many
of them can produce catastrophes better than Moli^re ;
in the long run, they succeed in stripping the theatre
of all awkwardness and circumlocution. A piquant
style, and perfect machinery; pungency in all the
words, and animation in all the scenes; a super-
abundance of wit, and marvels of ingenuity ; over all
this, a true physical activity, and the secret pleasure
of depicting and justifying oneself, of public self-
glorification : here is the foundation of the School for
Scandul, here the source of the talent and the success
of Sheridan.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 435

Richaxd Brinsley Sheridan was the contemporary
of Beaumarchais, and resembled him in his talent and
in his life. The two epochs, the two dramatic schools,
the two characters, correspond. Like Beaumarchais,
he was a lucky adventurer, clever, amiable, and
generous, reaching success through scandfd, who flashed
up in a moment, dazzled everybody, scaled with a rush
the empyrean of politics and literature, settled himself,
as it were, among the constellations, and, like a
brilliant rocket, presently went out completely ex-
hausted. . Nothing failed him; he attained all at the
first attempt, without apparent effort, like a prince who
need only show himself to win his place. He took as
his birthright everything that was most surpassing in
happiness, most brilliant in art, most exalted in worldly
position. The poor imknown youth, the wretched
translator of an unreadable Greek sophist, who at twenty
walked about Bath in a red waistcoat and a cocked hat,
destitute of hope, and ever conscious of the emptiness of
his pockets, had gained the heart of the most admired
beauty and musician of her time, had carried her off
from ten rich, el^ant, titled adorers, had fought with
the best-hoaxed of the ten, beaten him, had carried by
storm the curiosity and attention of the public. Then,
challenging glory and wealth, he placed successively on
the stage the most diverse and the most applauded
dramas, comedies, farce, opera, serious verse; he
bought and worked a large theatre without a farthing,
inaugurated a reign of successes and pecimiary advan-
tages, and led a life of elegance amid the enjoyments
of social and domestic joys, surroimded by universal
admiration and wonder. Thence, aspiring yet higher,
he conquered power, entered the House of Commons,

436 THE CLASSIC AOE. book m.

showed himself a match for the first orators, opposed
Pitt, accused Warren Hastings, supported Fox, jeered at
Burke ; sustained with brilliancy, disinterestedness, and
constancy, a most difficult and liberal part ; became one
of the three or four most noted men in England, an equal
of the greatest lords, the friend of the Prince of Wales,
in the end even Eeceiver-General of the Duchy of Corn-
wall, treasurer to the fleet. In every career he took
the lead. As Bjrron said of him : " Whatsoever
Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, par
excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written
the best comedy {The School for Scandal), the best drama
(in my mind far before that St Giles lampoon The
Beggar^a Opera), the best farce {The Critic — it is only
too good for a farce), and the best Address {Monologue
on Garrick), and, to crown all, delivered the very best
oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or
heard in this coimtiy."^

All ordinary rules were reversed in his favour. He
was forty-four years old, debts began to accumulate ;
he had supped and drunk to excess; his cheeks
were purple, his nose red. In this state he met at
the Duke of Devonshire's a charming yoimg lady
with whom he fell in love. At the first sight she
exclaimed, "What an ugly man, a regular monster!"
He spoke to her ; she confessed that he was very ugly,
but that he had a good deal of wit. He spoke again,
and again, and she found him very amiable. He spoke
yet again, and she loved him, and resolved at all hazard
to marry him. The father, a prudent man, wishing to
end the affair, gave out that his future son-in-law must
provide a dowry of fifteen thousand pounds ; the fifteen

* Ths Works of Lord Byron, 18 vols., ed. Moore, 1882, ii p. 803.

-\

cHAf. I. TflE RESTORATION. 437

thousand poimds were deposited as by magic in the hands
of a banker ; the young couple set ofifinto the country ;
and Sheridan, meeting his son, a find strapping fellow^
not very satisfied with the marriage, persuaded him that
it was the most sensible thing a father could do, and
the most fortunate event that a son could rejoice over.
Whatever the business, whoever the man, he persuaded ;
none withstood him, every one fell under his charm.

What is more difficult than for an ugly man to make
a young girl forget his ugliness ? There is one thing
more difficult, and that is to make a creditor forget you
owe him money. There is something more difficult
still, and that is, to borrow money from a creditor who
has come to dun you. One day one of his friends was
arrested for debt ; Sheridan sends for Mr. Henderson,
the crabbed tradesman, coaxes him, interests him, moves
him to tears, works upon his feelings, hedges him in
with general considerations and lofty eloquence, so that
Mr. Henderson offers his purse, actually wants to lend
two himdred pounds, insists, and finally, to his great joy,
obtains permission to lend it. No one was ever more
amiable, quicker to win confidence than Sheridan;
rarely has the sympathetic, affectionate, and fascinating
character been more fully displayed ; he was literally
seductive. In the morning, creditors and visitors filled
the rooms in which he lived ; he came in smiling with
an easy manner, with so much loftiness and grace, that
the people forgot their wants and their claims, and
looked as if they had only come to see him. His
animation was irresistible ; no one had a more dazzling
wit; he had an inexhaustible fund of puns, contriv-
ances, sallies, novel ideas. Lord Bjrron, who was a
good judge, said that he had never heard nor conceived

438 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

of a more extraordinary power of conversation. Men
spent nights in listening to him ; no one equalled him
during a supper ; even when drunk he retained his wit.
One morning he was picked up by the watch, and they
asked him his name ; he gravely answered, " Wilberforce."
With strangers and inferiors he had no arrogance or
stiffness; he possessed in an eminent degree that
unreserved character which always exhibits itself com-
plete, which holds back ncMie of its light, which abandons
and gives itself up ; he wept when he received a sincere
eulogy from Lord Byron, or in recounting his miseries
as a plebeian parvenu. Nothing is more charming than
this opennesa of heart; it at once sets people on a
footing of peace and amity ; men suddenly desert their
defensive and cautious attitude; they perceive that a man
is giving himself up to them, and they give themselves
up to him; the outpouring of his innermost feelings
invites the outpouring of theirs, A minute later,
Sheridan's impetuous and sparkling individuality flashes
out ; his wit explodes, rattles like a discharge of fire-
arms ; he takes the conversation to himself, with a sus-
tained brilliancy, a variety, an inexhaustible vigour, till
five o'clock in the morning. Against such a necessity
for launching out in unconsidered speech, of indulgence,
of self-outpouring, a man had need be well on his guard ;
life cannot be passed like a holiday ; it is a strife
against others and against oneself; people must think
of the future, mistrust themselves, make provision;
there is no subsisting without the precaution of a
shopkeeper, the calculation of a tradesman. K we sup
too often, we will end by not having wherewithal to
dine upon ; when our pockets have holes in them, the
shillings will fall out ; nothing is more of a truism, but

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 439

it is true. Sheridan's debts accumulated, his digestion
failed. He lost his seat in Parliament, his theatre was
burned ; sheriflTs officer succeeded sheriff's officer, and
they had long been in possession of his house. At last,
a bailiff arrested the dying man in his bed, and was
for taking him off in his blankets ; nor would he let
him go until threatened with a lawsuit, the doctor having
declared that the sick man would die on the road. A
certain newspaper (the Examiner) cried shame on the
great lords who suffered such a man to end so miserably ;
they hastened to leave their cards at his door. In the
funeral procession two brothers of the king, dukes, earls,
bishops, the first men in England, carried or followed
the body. A singular contrast, picturing in abstract all
his talent, and all his life ; lords at his funeral and
bailiffs at his death-bed.

His theatre was in accordance with his life ; all was
brilliant, but the metal was not all his own, nor was it
of the best quality. His comedies were comedies of
society, the most amusing ever written, but merely come-
dies of society. Imagine the exaggerated caricatures
artists are wont to improvise, in the drawing-room of a
house where they are intimate, about eleven o'clock in the
evening. His first play. The Rivals, and afterwards his
Duenna, and The Critic, are filled with these, and scarce
anything else. There is Mrs. Malaprop, a silly preten-
tious woman, who uses grand words higgledy-piggledy,
delighted with herself, in "a nice derangement of
epitaphs " before her nouns, and declaring that her niece
is " as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the
Nile." There is Bob Acres, who suddenly becomes a
hero, gets engaged in a duel, and being led on the
ground, calculates the effect of the balls^ thinks of his

440 THE CLASSIC AGE. book hi.

will, burial, embalmment, and wishes he were at homa
There is another caricature in the person of a clumsy and
cowardly ser\'ant, of an irascible and brawling father, of a
sentimental and romantic young lady, of a touchy Irish
duellist All this jogs and jostles on, without much
order, amid die surprises of a twofold plot, by aid of
appliances and rencontres, without the full and regular
control of a dominating idea. But in vain vie per-
ceive it is a patchwork; the high spirit carries off
ever)'thing : we laugh heartily ; every single scene has
its facetious and rapid movement ; we forget that the
clumsy valet makes remarks as witty as Sheridan him-
self/ and that the irascible gentleman speaks as well as
the most elegant of \niters.^ The playwright is also a
man of letters ; if, through mere animal and social spirit,
ho wished to amuse others and to amuse himself, he
di>es not forget the interests of his talent and tlie care
for his reputation. He has taste, he appreciates the
ivtinements of style, the worth of a new image, of a
striking C(mtrast, of a witty and well-considered insinua-
tion. He has, above all, wit, a wonderful conversational
wit, the art of rousing and sustaining the attention, of

* Acres, Odds blades I David, no gt-ntleman will ever risk the loss
of hid honour I

Ihtvid. I say, then, it would be but civil in honour never to risk the
U>M of a geutlenian. — lA)ok ye, master, this honour seems to me to be
« niarvellouft fjilse friend ; ay, truly, a very courtier-like servant — The
ih\inuaic Works of Richard BrinsUy Hhcridan^ 1828 : The Ritals^
ir. 1.

" Sir Anthony.— ^aj, but Jack, such eyes I so innocently wild ! so
Imnh fully irri'sohite ! Not a glance but speaks and kindles some
thought (»f love ! Tlicn, Jack, her cheeks I so deeply blushing at the
iiminuationn of her tell-tale eyes ! Then, Jack, her lips ! Jack, Iij)9,
Muiling at their own discretion ! and if not smiling, more sweetly
|H>utiug, more lovely in sullenuess ! — The Jiivals, iii 1.

I

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 441

being biting, varied, of taking his hearers unawares, of
throwing in a repartee, of setting folly in relief, of
accumulating one after another witticisms and happy
phrases. He brought himself to perfection subsequently
to his first play, having acquired theatrical experience,
writing and erasing ; trying various scenes, recasting,
arranging them; his desire was that nothing should
arrest the interest, no improbability shock the spectator ;
that his comedy might glide on with the precision,
certainty, uniformity of a good machine. He invents
jests, replaces them by better ones ; he whets his jokes,
binds them up like a sheaf of arrows, and writes at the
bottom of the last page, " Finished, thank God. — ^Amen."
He is right, for the work costs him some pains ; he
will not write a second. This kind of writing, artificial
and condensed as the satires of La Bruyfere, is like a
cut phial, into which the author has distilled all his re-
flections, his reading, his wit, without keeping anything
for himself.

What is there in this celebrated School for Scandal ?
And how is it that it has cast upon English comedy,
which day by day was being more and more forgotten,
the radiance of a last success? Sheridan took two
characters from Fielding, Blifil, and Tom Jones ; two
plays of Molifere, Ze Misanthrope and Tartuffe ; and from
these puissant materials, condensed with admirable
cleverness, he has constructed the most brilliant firework
imaginable. Molifere has only one female slanderer,
C^limfene ; the other characters serve only to give her
a cue : there is quite enough of such a jeering woman ;
she rails on within certain bounds, without hurry, like
a true queen of the drawing-room, who has time to
converse, who knows that she is listened to, who listens
to herself: she is a woman of society, who preserves

442 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

the tone of refined conversation ; and in order to smooth
down the harshness, her slanders are interrupted by the
calm reason and sensible discourse of the amiable
Eliante. Molifere represents the malice of the world
without exaggeration ; but in Sheridan they are rather
caricatured than depicted. " Ladies, your servant," says
Sir Peter ; " mercy upon me ! the whole set — a character
dead at every sentence." ^ In fact, they are ferocious :
it is a regular quarry ; they even befoul one another,
to deepen the outrage. Mrs. Candour remarks : " Yester-
day Miss Prim assured me, that Mr. and Mrs. Honey-
moon are now become mere man and wife, like the rest
of their acquaintance. She likewise hinted, that a
certain widow in the next street had got rid of her
dropsy, and recovered her shape in a most surprising
manner. ... I was informed, too, that Lord Flimsy
caught his wife at a house of no extraordinary fame ;
and that Tom Saunter and Sir Harry Idle were to
measure swords on a similar occasion."^ Their ani-
mosity is so bitter that they lower themselves to play
the part of bufiToons. The most elegant person in the
room. Lady Teazle, shows her teeth to ape a ridiculous
lady, draws her mouth on one side, and makes faces.
There is no pause, no softening ; sarcasms fly about like
pistol-shots. The author had laid in a stock, he had to
use them up. He himself is speaking through the
mouth of each of his characters ; he gives them all the
same wit, that is his own, his irony, his harshness, his
picturesque vigour ; whatever they are, clowns, fops, old
maids, no matter, the author's main business is to break
out into twenty explosions in a minute :

^ The School for ScancUU, ii 2. " Ihid, I 1.

^

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 443

" Mrs, Candour, Well, I will never join in the ridicule of a
friend ; so I tell my cousin Ogle, and ye all know what pre-
tensions she has to beauty.

Crab. She has the oddest countenance — a collection of
features from all the comers of the globe.

Sir Benjamin, She has, indeed, an Irish front

Crab, Caledonian locks.

Sir B, Dutch nose.

Crab, Austrian lips.

Sir B, The complexion of a Spaniard.

Crab, And teeth d la Chinoise,

Sir B. In short, her face resembles a table d!h6U at Spa,
where no two guests are of a nation.

Crab, Or a congress at the close of a general war, where
every member seems to have a different interest, and the nose
and chin are the only parties likely to join issue." ^

Or again :

" Crab, Sad news upon his arrival, to hear how your brother
has gone on !

Joseph Surface, I hope no busy people have already preju-
diced his imcle against him — he may reform.

Sir Benjamin, True, he may ; for my part, I never thought
him BO utterly void of principle as people say, and though he
has lost all his friends, I am told nobody is better spoken of
amongst the Jews.

Crab, Foregad, if the old Jewry was a ward, Charles would
be an alderman, for he pays as many annuities as the Irish
Tontine; and when he is sick, they have prayers for his re-
covery in all the Synagogues.

Sir B, Yet no man lives in greater splendor. — They tell me,
when he entertains his friends, he can sit down to dinner with
a dozen of his own securities, have a score of tradesmen waiting
in the anti-chamber, and an officer behind every guest's chair." ^

1 The School far Scandal, ii 2. « Ibid, i, 1.

444 THE CLASSIC AGE. book m.

And again:

" Sir B, Mr. Surface, I did not mean to hurt you, but depend
on't, your brother is utterly undone.

Crab, Oh ! undone as ever man was— can't raise a guinea.

Sir B, Everything is sold, I am told, that was moveable.

Crab, Not a moveable left, except some old bottles and some
pictures, and they seem to be framed in the wainscot, egad.

Sir B, I am sorry to hear also some bad stories of him.

Crab. Oh ! he has done many mean things, that's certain.

Sir B, But, however, he's your brother.

Crab, Ay! as he is your brother — well tell you more
another opportunity." ^

In this manner has he pointed, multiplied, driven in to
the quick the measured epigrams of Moli^re. And yet
is it possible to grow weary of such a well-sustained
discharge of malice and witticisms ?

Observe also the change which the hypocrite under-
goes imder Sheridan's treatment. Doubtless all the
grandeur disappears from the part. Joseph Surface does
not uphold, like TartufiTe, the interest of the comedy ;
he does not possess, like his ancestor, the nature of a
cad, the boldness of a man of action, the manners
of a beadle, the neck and shoulders of a monk. He is
merely selfish and cautious; if he is engaged in an
intrigue, it is rather against his will ; he is only half-
hearted in the matter, like a correct young man, well
dressed, with a fair income, timorous and fastidious
by nature, discreet in manners, and without violent
passions ; all about him is soft and polished, he takes
his tone from the times, he makes no display of re-

^ The School for Scandal^ i 1.

CHAP. I. THE RESTORATION. 445

ligion, though he does of moraKty; he is a man of
measured speech, of lofty sentiments, a disciple of Dr.
Johnson or of Rousseau, a dealer in set phrases. There
is nothing on which to construct a drama in this com-
monplace person ; and the fine situations which Sheri-
dan takes from Molifere lose half their force through
depending on such pitiful support But how this
insufficiency is covered by the quickness, abundance,
naturalness of the incidents ! how skill makes up for
everything ! how it seems capable of supplying every-
thing ! even genius ! how the spectator laughs to see
Joseph caught in his sanctuary like a fox in his hole ;
obliged to hide the wife, then to conceal the husband ;
forced to run from the one to the other ; busy in hiding
the one behind the screen, and the other in his closet ;
reduced, in casting himself into his own snares, in
justifying those whom he wished to ruin, the husband
in the eyes of the wife, the nephew in the eyes of the
uncle, to ruin the only man whom he wished to justify,
namely, the precious and immaculate Joseph Surface ;
to turn out in the end ridiculous, odious, baffled, con-
founded, in spite of his adroitness, even by reason of
his adroitness, step by step, without quarter or remedy ;
to sneak off, poor fox, with his tail between his legs, his
skin spoiled, amid hootings and laughter ! And how, at
the same time, side by side with this, the naggings of
Sir Peter and his wife, the suppers, songs, the picture
sale at the spendthrift's house, weave a comedy in a
comedy, and renew the interest by renewing the atten-
tion! We cease to think of the meagreness of the
characters, as we cease to think of the deviation from
truth ; we are willingly carried away by the vivacity of

446 THE CLASSIC AGE. book in.

the action, dazzled by the brilliancy of the dialogue ; we
are charmed, applaud ; admit that, after all, next to great
inventive faculty, animation and wit are the most agree-
able gifts in the world : we appreciate them in their
season, and find that they also have their place in the
literary banquet ; and that if they are not worth as much
as the substantial joints, the natural and generous wines
of the first course, at least they furnish the dessert

The dessert over, we must leave the tabla After
Sheridan, we leave it forthwith. Henceforth comedy
languishes, fails ; there is nothing left but farce> such as
Townley's High Life Below Stairs, the burlesques of
George Colman, a tutor, an old maid, countrymen and
their dialect; caricature succeeds painting; Punch raises
a laugh when the days of Reynolds and Gainsborough are
over. There is nowhere in Europe, at the present time,
a more barren stage ; the higher classes abandon it to
the people. This is because the form of society and of
intellect which had called it into being, have disappeared*
Vivacity, and the abimdance of original conceptions, had
peopled the stage of the Eenaissance in England, —
a surfeit which, unable to display itself in systematic
argument, or to express itself in philosophical ideas,
found its natural outlet only in mimic action and talk-
ing characters. The wants of polished society had
nourished the English comedy of the seventeenth
century, — a society which, accustomed to the repre-
sentations of the court and the displays of the world,
sought on the stage a copy of its conversation and its
drawing-rooms. With the decline of the court and the
check of mimic invention, the genuine drama and the
genuine comedy disappeared ; they passed from the stage

CHAP. L THE RESTORATION. 447

into books. The reason of it is, that people no longer
live in public, like the embroidered dukes of Louis XIV.
and Charles II., but in their families, or at^the writing-,
table ; the novel replaces the theatre at the same time
that citizen life replaces the life of the court

END OF VOL. n.

Prmitdby R. & R. Clark, Edinbutzh,

r\